Subj : Drain
To   : mark lewis
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Wed Jul 15 2020 22:06:43

Hi, Mark!  Recently you wrote in a message to Alexander Koryagin:

 AK>  My sentence had the opposite sense. I drained Jim
 AK>  everything that I knew...

 ml>  ahhh... in that case, you are missing "to" in the
 ml>  statement...

 ml>  I drained to Jim everything that I knew [...]


            Thanks to you & Anton, I now understand what Alexander had in mind. When we drain a bathtub or a swamp, e.g., the water goes somewhere else & there is little or none remaining in that location.  I was having difficulty with the idea of using "drain" WRT what a person knows because... in the ordinary way of things... they'd still have access to it.

            WRT concrete objects I interpret "I'll give to you a paper of pins" as equivalent to "I'll give you a gift, on the understanding that by so doing I am transferring ownership".  When I drain my bathtub the water goes into a pipe which ends at a waste treatment plant somewhere on Annacis Island.  Either way, the speaker no longer possesses &/or retains custody of whatever it is....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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