heh.

[tainted_heather]

"After getting home, they ate."

"After getting home, they devoured."

what do you think ? Are they both acceptable to you, or is one wrong ? Why ?

Comments

[reverie_shadow]

"After getting home, they ate."

Devoured is an action, and you'd have to say what they are devouring if you are going to be using that word. What are they devouring? If you're going to use that, you might want to add extra detail. But if you wish to keep it simple, I'd go with "they ate".

[profileofadream]

I agree with leo.

[tainted_heather]

Yeah, I was just seeing what people's perception on this was. I could tell that "After getting home they devoured." was wrong, too. Here is the answer to the reason to why we, native speakers of English recognize it to be wrong,even though we may not be able to place the exact reason why! But what you've said here is accurate!! Good job! lol heres the reason I found in my Linguistics text book,in my own words.

Although "devour" and "eat" are both verbs, they belong to different subcategories. The subcategory in which "devour" belongs, must have a complement present, where as the subcategory in which the verb "eat" belongs, does not.