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What is the difference between "indispensable to" and "indispensable for"?

Likewise, between "it is important to me" and "it is important for me", which one is correct?

herisson
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Huidong Im
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  • These are not terms used commonly; they must have been made up by your teacher or one of their teachers. They may be referring to the for...to complementizer that marks infinitives; that's all I can tell. As for the two sentences, both are correct; either preposition may be used with important; for may have an additional meaning in context. – John Lawler Sep 26 '14 at 15:53
  • Oh, sorry i wrongly typed "indispensable" to "indispensible". The original sentence was " His article was indispensable to the company". But I came to wonder if it was possible to change 'to' to 'for' without changing the meaning, or if the meaning changes, what would be the difference. This is kind of a same question with the second question. Thanks – Huidong Im Sep 26 '14 at 16:24
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    You're welcome, and you're right, it's the same in both cases. When an example sentence is given in context, things can often be understood. But with only strings of a couple words, there's no way anybody can understand your question. Tje spelling isn't important; the context is. You should always provide a full example sentence and a context for it when asking about meaning or grammar. – John Lawler Sep 26 '14 at 16:35
  • Related: “Importance of” vs. “Importance for”, as well as several of the questions in our dedicated tag, which I'm adding to your question. – RegDwigнt Sep 26 '14 at 21:01
  • Thank you Dwight! Are you the Dwight from the office? – Huidong Im Sep 28 '14 at 13:27

1 Answers1

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In many contexts, it makes no semantic difference whether we use for or to after words like indispensable, important, essential, etc. But sometimes there is a potential distinction...

1: "It's important to John to vote"
2: "It's important for John to vote"

I think most native speakers would agree that #1 always means it matters a lot to John that he votes, whereas in #2 it's possible John himself doesn't care one way or the other (but it does matter to the speaker and/or other people in general and/or it's important within the context of some ethical framework).

FumbleFingers
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