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I haven't seen her "for"/"in" two days

English Language & Usage Asked on September 5, 2021

What’s the difference between using either for or in in the following examples?

Bill hasn’t taken a vacation for/in two years.

Jack hasn’t been to school for/in four days.

I hadn’t seen Mary for/in three weeks when she finally decided to show up.

NgramAmEng vs. Ngram BrEng

IN

Expressing a period of time during which an event takes place or a situation remains the case:

they met in 1885

at one o’clock in the morning

I hadn’t seen him in years

ODO

FOR

Indicating the length of (a period of time):

he was in prison for 12 years

I haven’t seen him for some time

ODO

3 Answers

What's the difference between using either for or in in the following examples?

  • Bill hasn't taken a vacation for/in two years.
  • Jack hasn't been to school for/in four days.
  • I hadn't seen Mary for/in three weeks when she finally decided to show up.

There is no difference in grammaticality. All 3 sentences are grammatical, with either for or in.

There is no difference in meaning. All 3 sentences describe the same situation, with either for or in.

However, there is one difference in syntactic affordances. In with an indefinite durative temporal phrase (in weeks, in two days, in donkey's years, in a long time, etc.) is a Negative Polarity Item. I.e, in two days is restricted to negative contexts, while for two days has no such restriction.

Notice that all the examples above are negative. Remove the -n't to see the difference.

For works fine, though the sentences don't mean the same thing.

  • Bill has taken a vacation for two years. (a very long vacation)
  • Jack has been to school for four days. (there were four daily attendances)
  • I had seen Mary for three weeks. (indicates frequent or continuous contact)

But all the ones with in are ungrammatical, and have no discernible meaning.
Grammarians mark ungrammatical sentences with an asterisk:

  • *Jack has been to school in four days.
  • *Bill has taken a vacation in two years.
  • *I had seen Mary in three weeks.

In other words, in negative sentences, there are two ways to refer to duration, with in or with for. Outside a negative context, the system doesn't work the same way. Negation is very complex.

Correct answer by John Lawler on September 5, 2021

This use of 'in' means '[with]in' (during) the time period, as opposed to 'in' (after) the time period. Since time is never the recipient of anything, 'for' can be overloaded to mean 'during', and 'to' was once overloaded to mean '[un]to' which meant 'until'.

Answered by AmI on September 5, 2021

My sense of the language insists there is a potential semantic difference, a difference in meaning, although the two phrases 'in two years' and 'for two years' are often used interchangably. Leveraging the difference in meaning might require nuanced poetic use, but I think not. For past tense, negative constructions (as in "Bill hasn't taken a vacation in/for two years"),

  • '... in two years' means 'at any time during the past two years';
  • '... for two years' means 'since sometime prior to the past two years'.

Answered by JEL on September 5, 2021

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