TransWikia.com

Is "from" superflous following "stop" or "prevent"?

English Language & Usage Asked by SiliconBadger on July 19, 2021

I seem to encounter this more from British speakers, but they’ll often say something like

Protect it from heat to prevent the contents expanding.

instead of

Protect it from heat to prevent the contents from expanding.

It used to annoy me that from is omitted, but thinking about the meaning of the word, I’m not sure it makes sense to include it. I suspect it has been carried over from the phrasing to keep from happening, being synonymous with prevent. From makes sense to me here because keep is positional, and from signals where it shall not be. Omitting from would make the meaning positive, such that we’d ensure some action continues. But prevent and stop are already negative, and they’re not positional.

In this related post, prevent to happen (which seems to me essentially the same as prevent happening) is compared to prevent from happening, but it seems only to address how common each is: "Preventing them to wrap" vs "Preventing them from wrapping"

I know the inclusion of from is far more common; is it superfluous? Further, is it even logical to include it?

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP