News1 min ago
Grammar
Answers
No best answer has yet been selected by NITA EDWARDS. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It's obviously not the most reliable method, but if in doubt, google. In this case, "bored of" gets 499,000 hits, whereas "bored with" gets 726,000.
It can be horrifying how many hits you get with things that are clearly incorrect. 1,900,000 hits for "alot of", for example - one of my pet hates. I realise languages evolve permanently, but this is one bit of evolution I can do without (or should that be "without which I can do"?)
Definitely "bored with".
I think it comes from lack of differentiation between "v" "th" and "f" sounds, so a phrase such as "I would have thought..." becomes "I'd've thought.." and then lengthened again into "I'd of thought..".
In that example, does anyone ever ask "of you thought about.....?" No? So why say it that way round!!
I can fully understand your getting upset at what you see as degradations in the language (my pet hates include "alot", "key" as a predicative adjective and "less+countable noun"). However, if languages didn't evolve, the world would be a much less interesting place.
I also think a dictionary's primary task is to be descriptive rather than proscriptive, but that's another thread!