I feel slightly offended. Because it’s true.
(Alt text: “Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you’re currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.”)
I feel slightly offended. Because it’s true.
(Alt text: “Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you’re currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.”)
I feel like I’d use “Fell in a hole” if I took up most of the space of the hole, and could probably get out on my own, while I’d use “Fell down a hole” if I took up very little of the space of the hole, and couldn’t get out on my own.
Similar for me - I think the depth of the hole matters more? It would sound odd to say “I fell down a pothole”.
If I were to rely on my “guts”:
However I’m not a native speaker, and my L1 is rather relaxed when it comes to what prepositions convey. And from a quick websearch, Google lists 3.3M occurrences for “fell in a hole”, 2.2M occurrences for “fell into a hole” and 820k for “fell down a hole”; that hints for me that, by default, speakers would use “in a hole” here, unlike I would.
I am a native speaker, and I do take my word choices very seriously - often to the point of pausing during conversations to find the exact phrasing which will convey the shade of meaning I am looking to convey. I wrote fiction for a while, and it was always extremely important to me to get phrasing right.
I agree with you completely. While I would interpret all of those phrases as equivalent (based on context) if they were to come from someone else, I would tend to use them in exactly the ways you suggest.
If I was walking and stumbled into a hole: “fell in a hole”
If I was climbing in/around the hole intentionally and stumbled: “fell down a hole”
It all depends on how actively involved with the hole I was and if I knew of it’s existence.