What on earth is a “dangling preposition”?

Let us consult . . . the Internet. I am almost said “an expert”, but that is a whole new post.

Back to this post, a “dangling preposition” is, according to the Internet. . . . Wow, Wikipedia, the #1 hit, is for once unintelligible. Let’s try second place. Ok, here are examples of dangling prepositions according to site #2: who are you going with; which box did you put it in; and who’s the letter addressed to? With, in and to at the end of these sentences are the prepositions, and they are dangling because they do not have an object attached.

In the English language (or at least the American English I’m using here) a preposition is a “directing word” (you might call it a “finger-pointing word”). The wagging digit demands an answer. What? Who? Where? In other words (and these are my words, not my High School Grammar Teacher): “Don’t you ever preposition me without an object to your advances?”

Okay, but let’s consider the Grammarians acceptable answer to the connundrum of the dangling prepositional phrase.

Here is how an astute artist of aura-words would paint those sentences “correctly” today. With whom are you going? In which box did you put it? To whom is that letter addressed? Have you ever heard the likes of that? Land O Goshen. I should think not, unless you are up very late and viewing a very old English movie. In this day and age, no one would dare address another in such a formalized vernacular. The covered mouths, rolling eyes and snickers would blanket with embarrassment and muffle the very speech.

Simply stated, dangling prepositions are perfectly acceptable in everyday speech. Should they be anticipated in the everyday writing of our times? On the written page, do prepositions always have to be followed by an object? Is such dictated phraseology archaic, old-fashioned, borderingly puerile and perhaps demeaning to a freely given and happily written dangling preposition?

In summary, do prepositions always need the clutter of objects to end with? Can and should dangling at the end of a line be allowed, approved, accepted and applauded, as it is in angling — especially at this time of the year?

“Where are you going to?” I asked. “About 25 hours by car, directly north,” he responded. “Want to go along?” he asked. “Above the Great Lakes, I bet,” I said, and added, “Where at?” “A little lake in the woods, by the name of Separation, just north of  Kenora, Ontario. There’ll be plenty of Pike, to keep our rods bent with the fight of the fish, before the catch and release after and back to.” “Their watery home?” I asked. “You betcha,” he answered.

Footnote: A Northern Pike is an aquatic monster of the North Woods, way up there in Canada and around. You’ll find some of ‘em in Minnesota. I remember on the Boundary Waters along the Minnesota border glancing over the side of our small boat at our stringer of smallish fish only to see this huge elongated and armored shape open a gaping maw full of glistening teeth as the ravaging denizen of the deep water considered swallowing the bunch, stringer and all, and then be off – perhaps sinking us as the great fish savored its late afternoon repast. I have hooked a few of that Northern’s cousins, but never a granddaddy of comparable size and contemplative stare – a young lad’s memory to savor all one’s life and beyond.

Angling for the great fish of the Northern Woods is where I’d like to be at. I mean I’d dangle a preposition over the side of that boat and wait for the next to happen by. With luck, I might hook the object of a great fight and bring the monster in and close up. Reaching down into the cold water, I’d carefully extract the hook and send that fighting fish right back to. The lake ripples echoing my happy sigh, I’d slump back and watch the limp line dangle against the clear blue sky, delighted to have sighted again the goal of my long-sought quest, refreshed and satisfied, not needing to mount that fearsome object at the end of a worn phrase above a fabricated mantel for the dusts of forgotten usage to sully and slowly collect upon.

As they say in the far timber: “Keep angling at and that line may be dangling with. Luck, you betcha.”

They appreciate their prepositions up that away and the freedom of their objects.

To them, dangling and angling have always been compatible.

Up there in the colder climbs and there about.

Good fishin’.

Grandpa Fisherman