skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year
skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year.---Charles Dickens
How to understand this sentence? rain, snow, hail, and blow are intransitive verbs, why they can be followed by an object "ink"? Sorry, I think I should provide the whole sentence:
“There could not well be more ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year.”--- David Copperfield
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Answers · 3
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English transitive verbs can often be converted to intransitive and vice versa. In this case, it means that ink was falling from the sky in the form of rain, snow, hail, etc. "Blow" would mean that the ink is blown around.
I don't know where this quote comes from, but it probably doesn't refer to "real" ink, but rather to something for which ink is a metaphor.
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