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I came across these phrases when I read the Elementary volume of the English book Solutions by Oxford University Press, listening 1.30.

In the audio script, there are two sentences: "He usually visits us at the weekend" and "I don't see her during the week, but we often meet at weekends". They confused me since, from these sentences in the speech, they both mean "at many weekends". But obviously, the phrase "at the weekend" is in the singular form and many English sources say that it means "at some particular weekend". I checked both OALD and CALD but they both do not provide any specific explanation about these phrases. Even Britanica discusses somethings about "weekend" but totally misses whether "at the weekend" means "at many weekends" or not (see this: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/Over-the-weekend-on-the-weekend-at-the-weekend).

Please help to explain these phrases. Thank you.

Ng.
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    Note that Americans do things *on the weekend* rather than *at...* Mostly it makes no difference whether you use singular *the weekend* or plural *weekends, except that What did you do at the weekend?* by default asks about *last weekend, whereas What did you do on weekends?* asks about *many weekends* in the past (such as ...when you worked abroad last year?) – FumbleFingers Oct 13 '23 at 16:24

1 Answers1

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The use of the singular slightly emphasizes that it occurs on some weekends. One might even say, "He usually visits us at a weekend." What is being shown is that when a visit does occur, it is often occurs on the weekend.

"He visits us at weekends," implies that he visits every weekend.

BTW, American English is more likely to use on for the preposition: "He usually visits us on the weekend," or "He usually visits us on weekends."

DrMoishe Pippik
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