I feel slightly offended. Because it’s true.
(Alt text: “Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you’re currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.”)
I feel slightly offended. Because it’s true.
(Alt text: “Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you’re currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.”)
I feel like I’d use “Fell in a hole” if I took up most of the space of the hole, and could probably get out on my own, while I’d use “Fell down a hole” if I took up very little of the space of the hole, and couldn’t get out on my own.
If I were to rely on my “guts”:
However I’m not a native speaker, and my L1 is rather relaxed when it comes to what prepositions convey. And from a quick websearch, Google lists 3.3M occurrences for “fell in a hole”, 2.2M occurrences for “fell into a hole” and 820k for “fell down a hole”; that hints for me that, by default, speakers would use “in a hole” here, unlike I would.
I could say “I fell in a hole” to mean either case (I was in or out of the hole beforehand), but for “I fell into a hole” I would only use it when starting outside the hole. (native speaker)
Like on the one hand it could mean “I fell [while I was] in the hole”
But it could also mean “I fell [and then I was] in the hole”
Similar for me - I think the depth of the hole matters more? It would sound odd to say “I fell down a pothole”.
Agreed. I feel like the dimensions of the hole is relevant. Like if it has to be wider than it is deep to fall in. But it be needs to be deeper than is wide to fall down into.
And maybe the hole has to be at least wide enough that you can lie horizontally in to fall in it? Not sure about that though. But when falling down a hole, that definitely doesn’t matter. The hole has to be deeper that I am tall for me to fall down it, horizontal width doesn’t matter, it’s all about the vertical in that case.