[mesmark]

I'm having problems with the 'with' in this sentence.

She can't bear 'with' it anymore.

It sounds awkward to me, but I wanted some other opinions. If I change the pronoun to the actual noun, it seems less awkward.

She can't bear with the sorrow anymore.

but in either case I'd probably cross out the 'with'. What do you think?

[mesmark]

I did a Google Battle that came up 9,700 vs 900 in favor of my intuition.

Is it that once you can't bear it, you are no longer bearing with it?

[susan53]

I wouldn't use the "with" personally - and it surprised me : I don't think I've ever come across it before in the sense of "hate". Only to mean "wait patiently" as in as "Bear with me a moment while I check". Though the underlying meaning of the two is clearly the same.

If you found it in a student's work, was it perhaps a confusion between the two? If not - no idea.

[mesmark]

Sue - yeah, it was a student's essay and I corrected it, but I knew she would ask 'why?'

Actually, she already did ask why and I gave her the explanation above as a tenative 'this is the best I can come up with for now, but I'll ask around' answer.

As for meaning, I think she meant 'tolerate', but that leads me to a new question, would you use 'bear with ...' to mean 'tolerate' in BE? Or is that what you meant by 'wait patiently'?

In AE the following are Ok:
'My company can bear with the current economic situation.'
'I'm bearing with the pain, but if it gets worse, I'll go see a doctor.'

The first is OK without 'with' but the second one sounds awkward without 'with'.
'My company can bear the current economic situation.'
?'I'm bearing the pain, but if it gets worse, I'll go see a doctor.'

[susan53]

I wonder if there's a US/UK difference here too. Because to me, the "pain" example sounds very odd with "with". I'd just say "I'm bearing the pain." It wouldn't occur to me to use "with" in that context. In the other example I would see a difference in meaning between "bear the current situation" ie tolerate, carry on without damage and "bear with the current situation" - ie wait patiently, ride it out despite the damage. Given which, the "pain" example should also be able to have both meanings too ...

In the student's example though, it seems that the meaning is clearly tolerate rather than wait patiently. So the answer is perhaps more clear-cut. The problem with your examples above is that the speaker could potentially mean either - or maybe intend a sort of overlapping middle ground. That seems to me especially true of the company example. I'm waffling a bit here though.

Odd things, words.