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Is it correct to say

"My daughter will be waiting me on the Dulles Airport lobby"

or

"My daughter will be waiting for me on the Dulles Airport lobby"?

Jasper
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priscila
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2 Answers2

2

It is "waiting for me."

*Waiting me" is not standard English.

Also, the preposition on is not correct here. It should be in or at.

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  • +1 but what if we used awaiting? Still would need the preposition for? I'm not sure if await me = wait for me. – Lucian Sava May 16 '15 at 17:48
  • @LucianSava Almost nobody says await. "Await is a fairly common word in formal writing, but you do not usually use it in conversation. Instead you use wait for, often followed by an object and a to-infinitive. For example, instead of saying 'I awaited her reply', you say 'I waited for her to reply'." –  May 16 '15 at 22:34
  • (The above unsourced quote is apparently from The Free Dictionary, or another source that TFD uses as a source, but if so, I'm not sure which.) –  May 17 '15 at 16:43
2

Short answer:

It's wait for X, not *wait X.

Longer answer:

The verb wait is usually intransitive, so it doesn't take a direct object:

*My daughter will be waiting me in the Dulles Airport lobby.

This is ungrammatical. Me is a direct object, but wait doesn't take one.

My daughter will be waiting for me in the Dulles Airport lobby.

This is grammatical. Wait takes the preposition phrase for me as a complement.

Fixed Expressions

The use of wait as a transitive verb is fairly limited:

In our senior year Jack took a part-time job waiting tables in the Violet Cafe.

This is a fixed expression meaning something like "working as a waiter in a restaurant; working at a restaurant, serving customers at tables".

Get in line and wait your turn like everyone else.

This is a fixed expression meaning something like "wait your turn; wait until it is your turn to do something".

Outside of fixed expressions like these, wait is typically intransitive.

In this answer, the * symbol marks a phrase or sentence as ungrammatical.

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