> If you haven't got a fresh chicken, I'll take a frozen chicken.
If you haven't got a fresh chicken, I'll take a frozen one.
If you haven't got a fresh chicken, I'll take one frozen.
If you haven't got a fresh chicken, I'll take a frozen.
If you haven't got fresh cream, I'll take canned cream.
If you haven't got fresh cream, I'll take the canned.
If you haven't got (any) fresh cream, I'll take some (of the) canned.
If you haven't got fresh cream, I'll take ?canned.
I'm looking for fresh cream, but if you haven't got any, I'll take canned.
It turns out that this is a more interesting question than it might initially appear:
5
Can to-infinitives ever follow the verb dislike? I know they can follow the verb like that way, but what about dislike? I ask because my school grammar textbook says the following:
The verb dislike takes only the gerund form of verbs after it.
There is something amiss about that sta...
One thing that’s interesting about it is that its answers, and most of its comments, turn out to be wrong.
Particularly when observed diachronically.
There may be a teaching point or two here.
One of those could involve actually running some quick fact-checks on one’s own feeling, hunches, and beliefs.
Another teaching point could be that until proper citations and references are provided, it’s just one person’s unsubstantiated assertion and guesswork.
Still another could pull in the concepts of recency illusions and locality delusions.
We’ve definitely got some curious cognitive biases in play here that are preventing folks from coming upon the right answer.
I guess the moral of the story is to always check your assumptions and to always document your assertions.
Some quantification through corporal research would also help in this instance.
> If asked why, in that case, we do not emigrate to Portugal, he replies that capitalists fear to send their capital into countries in which they are not resident, and dislike to go and settle in foreign countries themselves.
> Sinners dislike to go and work in God's vineyard, because of their prevailing love to carnal ease. Spiritual sloth is so sweet a sin, that the carnal heart is always in love with it.
Now, those are dislike to go and do something, which is something different from disliking going and doing something. Probably. But there are many, many, many clear instances from the 19th century where the infinitive complement is perfectly common, much more common in fact than the gerund complement.
> I very much wish to walk there, and particularly dislike to go in quite by myself.
> I certainly should dislike to go into another Regt. To be sure I could worry through 11 months most any way but I would rather go with the Boys.
> I dislike to go up there very much, the place is so lonely but I feel that duty demands of me to go even at the sacrifice of my own feelings.
> My old master and mistress to Virginia, had often threatend to sell me to the negro buyer from Georgia, for any trifling offence, and in order to make me dislike to go there, they would tell me I should have to eat cotton seed, and make indigo, ...
> It has pleased those philosophers who dislike to have an effect presented to their consideration without a cause duly assigned and certified, to ascribe my fragile health to a consumptive habit, and, having afflicted me with a 'pulmonary disease ...
> A novel would scarcely be distinguished from a book of travels, if loaded with a heavy commentary; and many readers not only dislike to have their attention called to the bottom of the page, but care little for the explanation thus offered them.
> As much as I dislike to have the jury running in and out I think this is important. It ought to be given a full airing in open court.
> In the first place, one would dislike to have other persons break the promises which they had made to oneself whenever they found it inconvenient to fulfil them. But this presupposes a certain aversion in oneself, which one no doubt correctly ...
> Some dislike to have it in the house anywhere. All salted provision must be watched, and kept under the brine.
> He assumes people like to be better paid than others, and dislike to be paid worse.
> Primarily because they instinctively dislike to be bossed. All men dislike to be bossed, employer and employee alike.
> I hope to be able to see you again, but fear not as I dislike to be asking for leave while here, and when I get orders it will be necessary to obey them at once. If I can go to see you without any neglect of duty, I will.
> Much of the Great Ones might be learnt in such regions, and those with their blood might inherit little memories very useful to a seeker. They might not know their parentage, for the gods so dislike to be known among men that none can be found who has seen their faces wittingly; a thing which Carter realised even as he sought to scale Kadath.
> Children dislike to be carried, or to be raised.
> They speak jeeringly of our wilderness of deceased elms, and sneer at our defunct magnolias. We hate to cast a reflection on the house, but we also dislike to be played for Chinamen when we are no such thing.
Most uses of dislike to VERB in the past century are triggered either by a parallel like to VERB nearby, or some other construction that requires an infinitive there, like dislike to go (and) see.
But in the century prior, it was more common to use the infinitive here than the gerund.
I wonder why I just now said century prior instead of prior century?
That one is Lovecraft, so we may perhaps excuse him.
> It is very questionable whether, if perseveringly confined for several hours together every day, it will not pine, to the injury of its health, so much does it dislike to be left alone.
I find myself like Janus here. It seems almost borderline ungrammatical today. But it was the rule not the exception in antebellum writings.
In transcribing a business letter written in 1776, I keep finding an apparent abbreviation, 'qsd' with a line over the s, e.g "this to be qsd my brother." Can anyone tell me what this means?
Is “I dislike to go there” a wrong sentence?
ᴛʟᴅʀ:
Like like, historically dislike took a ᴛᴏ-infinitive not an -ɪɴɢ verb, but over the last century common usage has swapped those two preferences and now the ᴛᴏ-infinitive sounds distinctly odd to the modern ear. At the same time, dislike has also...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
