A preposition question!
Hello, I'm here to ask a question about preposition.
I was asked about a question: " ________night of fire".
there are four options: a) in, b) on, c) at d), of.
I gave the wrong answer by saying that it might be "in", but the answer should be" on".
So I want to ask why we should say on in this case?
Thank you in advance for any responses.Revised:
The whole sentence is: Luckily, they were not at home_________the night of the big fire. My question is don't we usually use "at"before night? Thank you all for your information.
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 13
2
I need a little more context and description to be sure the correct answer. Did the original question perhaps say " ________ the night of the fire"?
If so, the most frequently used preposition would be "on" -
- The house burned down on the night of the fire.
In some cases, "of" might be correct:
- I have no memory of the night of the fire
"In the night" is sometimes used by itself, usually somewhat poetically -
- He left silently, like a thief in the night -
- but more often with another prepositional phrase, like "in the cold/dark/quiet/stillness of the night." "In the middle of the night" is a very common expression for anytime from long after dark to a few hours before dawn.
Edit:
"The whole sentence is: Luckily, they were not at home _________ the night of the big fire. My question is don't we usually use "at"before night?"
We do usually say "at night" when we're talking about nighttime in general:
- It gets surprisingly cold in the desert at night.
But we say "on" when we're talking about one specific night in particular:
- I saw snow falling in the desert on one very cold winter night.
We might say that it was especially lucky they were not home ON the night of the big fire, because usually they were home AT night.
I'd ask if this makes everything clear for you, but I'm sure it doesn't =). Prepositions in English just are not easy for anyone. So, please let me know how else I can help. ;)
1
To use all of them say, "The fire occurred AT the fire station located AT 123 Main St. IN the boiler room ON 2/2/1990, due to a leak IN a gas pipe, which was caused by the lack OF a proper maintenance inspection."
1
I would need more context and description to answer this question because none of those answers seems correct to me. The answer might be something like " A night of fire" but apart from that, without context I don't see how it could be "On a night of fire"
If the answer was to just choose a prepositional phrase then the answer would be correct because prepositional phrases are phrases like on, under, over Phrases like where you are.
hope this helped :)
0
None of them seem correct to me, unless I am missing something. Is that the whole sentence that you were given? If it is, then the word that fits most would be "a", making it "A night of fire", meaning none of the options you were given are correct.
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