I’m completely confused when it comes to the combinations with over / down / out:
Thank you for coming over / – coming down / – coming out.
Come over here / – down here / – out here.
Over there / Down there / Out there.
How do I decide which one and when to use?
Answer
They’re all perfectly good, and in some contexts, two or even all three of them will fit: it all depends on the spatial (or sometimes notional) arrangement of the situation.
Come over means “come from somewhere else to here”. Sometimes it is literal: from the other side of the road, or of a fence. But sometimes it is more abstract, meaning something like “from your notional space to mine”. This might mean neighbourhood (from your town to here), or property (from your house) but it might be much more vague, “the place you happen to be in right now, to the place I happen to be in”. In the latter case there is often (but not always) a slightly antagonistic sense to it, implying that you have not only a physical position but a “position” from which you are arguing. A common idiom is “come over” meaning “come to my house for some social reason”.
Come down means, “come from a higher place to here”. Literally it might be used to mean “come down the stairs” or “come down from your balcony”. But it is often used in one particular metaphorical sense of “come to this meeting place” such as a club, a mall, a bar. “Thanks for coming down” is often used at the start of a meeting.
Come out means “come from inside to here”, and is nearly always used literally*; but what constitues “inside” may vary – out of a house, out of a crowd, out of a park.
The idiomatic use of spatial prepositions and adverbs is one of the hardest parts in learning a language.
(*) There is also a very specific idiomatic meaning of come out as “Announce publicly something about oneself that has been kept secret, especially homosexuality”.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : qwaz , Answer Author : Colin Fine
