Upon hearing the news” / “On hearing the news.The hat upon her head” / “That hat on her head.We can also say “on” with the gerund structure that we’ve previously talked about, although Upon is preferred. We also have the various ways that both on and upon are interchangeably used in Modern English.Įnglish Corner – Prepositions of Place – The Life and Times of Ben WeinbergĪs demonstrated in the image above, “on” is used for when an object rests above another, and we can say the preposition Upon here, too. In the first example, we use “on” to talk about a general action which is unbound by time. The two examples show how similar the two are, but the second is an action completed and bound by time, so we say upon. Upon arrival at work, he sent an email to his new boss.You should email your new boss on arrival.The words also differ with regards to time. It’s a set expression using upon and cannot be replaced by “on”. Here, the phrase “be upon ” is used to explain that the Spring season is coming. The Cambridge Dictionary provides this example, an instance where upon cannot be replaced by “on”: Another few weeks and spring will be upon us.
The difference between the words “on” and Upon is quite subtle. On the other hand, “up” is used for direction and is not the same as Upon. Of its two preposition components, it’s used very similarly to “on”. One set expression which has survived through fairly tales and other short stories is the opener: “Once upon a time”. This could indeed be because it’s an old word, featured in lots of historical texts. This preposition will need to precede noun phrases such as in “upon the hill” and “they’re upon us”, as well as some gerunds (-ing verbs) which may need it: “upon learning the news”.īesides where we use it grammatically, Upon features largely in writing and is considered to be quite formal. Maybe you recognize its components, “up” and “on”, which are also prepositions, and the foundation of the word. Where do we use upon?įirst things first, upon is a preposition. There are many different ideas of where apon and upon come from, and it’s very likely that there were many different spellings, and even meanings, of the word when the preposition it was first being used. The Oxford English Dictionary, the principal historical dictionary of the English language, reveals that the origin of Upon is linked to the Old Norse “upp á”, which could in turn be related to the apon variation as the stress was placed on the “á”.
There was much greater variation in Middle English spellings than those of Modern English (Present Day English), because spellings reflected pronunciation, so different dialects would write in different ways. According to their summary, Apon would have reflected a pronunciation like “opone”.
Harvard’s History of the English Language Workbook outlines how spellings have changed from Middle to Modern English. This could be translated as a man was on a tree, so you can see how many words weren’t to similar. Here’s an example to show you both how ‘apon’ was used, and just how significantly the English language has changed since the Middle English era: There’s no difference in use and meaning, only in spelling the archaic form ‘apon’ is a word used in Middle English, an ancestor of today’s English language. You may read the word ‘apon’ in place of ‘upon’.
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