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Often the verb fight is used without a preposition before its object, and sometimes with the preposition against!

"...fought the invaders of his homeland". (M-W Dictionary)

He fought the disease for three years.

He fought against racism. (Cambridge Dictionary)

Are both the usages equally acceptable, or is there any special rule as to when to use a preposition?

mahmud k pukayoor
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1 Answers1

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According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary the verb 'fight' is both transitive /to contend against in or as if in battle/ and intransitive /to contend in battle/ . So both sentences are correct. We use the direct object /without preposition/ after transitive verbs, for example: to fight a battle / a fire, etc. After intransitive verbs we sometimes use a preposition, for example: to fight for the heavyweight / against someone, etc.

user307254
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  • Intransitive verbs do not take objects, and none of my example sentences above contains intransitive fight. – mahmud k pukayoor Nov 30 '18 at 15:37
  • In the first two sentences there's a transitive verb with the direct object. In the third sentence the verb is intransitive. It is followed by the indirect prepositional object. – user307254 Nov 30 '18 at 16:11
  • Can't we say he fought the racism as the second sentence he fought the disease ? – mahmud k pukayoor Nov 30 '18 at 16:32
  • Compare two definitions in Merriam Webster Dictionary: 1. Fight as intransitive verb - to contend in battle. 2. Fight as transitive verb - to contend against in battle. So we can say both 'to fight smth' and 'to fight against smth'. But in these sentences the grammatical meanings of the verb are different. – user307254 Nov 30 '18 at 17:04
  • Haven't you noticed the example sentence there in M-W -The soldiers fought bravely.-, which has an intransitive verb and has no object. My question is about the transitive usage of "fight" with and without a preposition. – mahmud k pukayoor Nov 30 '18 at 17:37
  • @mahmudkoya It's not transitive if followed by a preposition, same goes for verbs that I know of. "He fought against racism" isn't a transitive use of "fight". "Write" in "Please write me every day" is transitive, but "Please write to me every day is not." – Zebrafish Nov 30 '18 at 17:47
  • @Zebrafish It may not be as a clear cut as that. See this answer. It seems that, linguistically, there may be transitive phrasal verbs that include a preposition. Whether or not fight against counts as a transitive phrasal verb, I don't know. – Jason Bassford Nov 30 '18 at 17:53
  • @JasonBassford That's a good point, that hadn't occurred to me. – Zebrafish Nov 30 '18 at 18:01
  • @Zebrafish , You said he fought against racism isn't a transitive use of fight. Then, where does the action denoted by the action verb fight transfer to? Or, Can't we make a passive equivalent to this sentence as Racism was fought (against) by him ? – mahmud k pukayoor Nov 30 '18 at 18:38
  • @mahmudkoya Good question. From AHD: "fight" intransitive, "They are always fighting about money." "fought against graft; fighting for her rights." transitive: "fought his boss over every penny; fought temptation." In the intransitive use I don't know that it "transfers", but an additional phrase gives context to the verb. You can fight "against", "for", "about", "over", "in", "on" something. Maybe you see the third example from Cambridge Dictionary as transitive because fighting is usually done against something, and so you see "fighting" and "fighting against" as the same. Also, if you ... – Zebrafish Dec 01 '18 at 06:15
  • ... look at the Cambridge Dictionary link you gave, you'll notice that the verb is markes [I or T], and you'll also see (might be a bit hard to see) that the intransitive uses are marked in bold, while the transitive ones aren't. I understand your confusion. Jason makes a good point, what if we were to consider "fight against" a phrasal verb? Then in that case it probably would be a transitive use taking an object, but generally speaking it's not seen as such. Edit: actually the bolding is shown in your question, as I'm assuming you copied and pasted the example. – Zebrafish Dec 01 '18 at 06:18
  • Different authorities judge transitivity differently. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 22 '20 at 16:01