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In just under two weeks, my first year at Yale will officially come to a close. It may be cliché, but it feels like just yesterday I walked through the gates of Morse College on an impossibly hot day to start my college career.

https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/rhayna/2022/04/28/look-back-my-first-year-yale

According to dictionaries, "at" is used to say where something/somebody is or where something happens, which means it doesn't match with words of time. It rather should mean "spent while being in" to match with nouns of time: "my first day spent while being in Yale".

Why I post this post is, should I depend on contexts more than dictionaries in cases like this? Thank you for reading.

https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/at

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    What dictionary did you check? Please edit to tell more about what you found. Simple, short words like "at" often have a lot of uses; this one gives at least six. – Andy Bonner Jan 25 '24 at 01:30
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    There is nothing wrong with the example quote - at Yale is correct. – Billy Kerr Jan 25 '24 at 01:39
  • @AndyBonner I use the same dictionary, the Merriam, but I found it on Longman. –  Jan 25 '24 at 03:04
  • @BillyKerr I know. I mean there's no corresponding meaning in some dictionaries. –  Jan 25 '24 at 03:04
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    Common prepositions like *at, in, on,...* are virtually "content-free" in many contexts - they're just the syntactic glue holding the meaningful words together. Don't waste time trying to understand "the meaning" of *at* as a "word" - focus on understanding the overall sense of the containing utterance. – FumbleFingers Jan 25 '24 at 04:10
  • @FumbleFingers Thank you for the tip. –  Jan 25 '24 at 04:37
  • At is used specifically with universities, colleges and schools. It's a common collocation. This is just common usage, and not something you will find in a dictionary to be honest. You just have to learn it, there's no specific reason for it. You could also say: My first year spent at Yale was excellent. There can be exceptions to this when talking of something within/inside a university. – Billy Kerr Jan 25 '24 at 10:34
  • While it's quite true that most people currently prefer to refer to a year at* Harvard, that's just established idiomatic preference - not a matter of "correct syntax". There are plenty of written contexts using in* (a *container metaphor* rather than the (literal?) *location* reference). – FumbleFingers Jan 25 '24 at 12:50
  • @BillyKerr I'd say that usage also extends to workplaces ("My first year at Google"), though that one can also take "with." – Andy Bonner Jan 25 '24 at 14:46
  • @AndyBonner - yeah, I agree. I think it's also fairly common usage to use at with workplaces too. – Billy Kerr Jan 25 '24 at 16:26

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Although this example is an odd one, since it seems easy to find a dictionary definition that matches this use of "at," your basic point is sound.

Yes, sometimes it's possible to find a word used in a certain way, and not to find a matching explanation in a dictionary. For one thing, any dictionary that tried to cover every usage of every word would be very long. The Oxford English Dictionary tries for this kind of in-depth coverage. But some other dictionaries focus on only the most common usages, since putting in lots more would make it more confusing and harder to find the common ones.

And yes, context is the most powerful tool to discern meaning. That's why many dictionaries give examples of the word in a sentence!

That said, this specific problem seems solvable. "According to dictionaries, 'at' is used to say where something/somebody is"—well, that's what we have here. "My first year at Yale"—Yale is where this somebody is. Perhaps you're confused because you expect something like "my first year is at Yale." But that's just about phrases, clauses, and sentences. Consider this: "The chair at the table is red." The core of this sentence is "the chair is red," but the phrase "at the table" does tell where the chair is.

Andy Bonner
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  • Yes, the dictionary only says that usage: my first year is at Yale; which is nonsense; which means you get my point, though. Dictionaries should say at least that "at" is used to say the mentioned time when somebody is at the mentioned place. –  Jan 25 '24 at 03:13
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    "My first year" = "The first year I have spent" at Yale. – Kate Bunting Jan 25 '24 at 09:38
  • @Prettiestguyever - 'my first year is at Yale; which is nonsense' - this is not 'nonsense': - For three years I will be a travelling professor (or student): my first year is at Yale; my second year is at Harvard; my third is at Oxford'. – Michael Harvey Jan 25 '24 at 09:56
  • @MichaelHarvey I mean "be" as "be positioned". Though, I've understood what you were trying to say. –  Jan 25 '24 at 10:20