Greetings grammarians you've come to the right place for another
mind-blowing English grammar lesson let's do this.
Today's lesson UPON or ON
To summarize there are cases where you must use ON there are cases where you can use both.
Sometimes ON or UPON. In some cases ON is more common and sometimes UPON is more common. There
are cases where you must use UPON. ON, as I'm sure you know, is a much more common word than UPON.
Most of the time you will use ON. The book is on the shelf. UPON is interchangeable with ON here
but the book is upon the shelf? Yeah I could say that but it sounds strange, sounds very strange.
Grammatically correct but nobody would say that in modern English except if for some reason you
want to convey a style of English from the 18th century. It's archaic so, if it's a preposition
of physical positions use ON never UPON and ON is used in many more situations than UPON
just to give you a few examples. ‘she's on the phone,’ ‘he's on my right,’ ‘I'm on the train.’
We arrived on time. ‘I saw them on tv’ etc, always ON in almost every case UPON wouldn't make any
sense in those examples and I'm not going to give you a list of all the cases where you use ON. So,
if you have any doubt if I don't mention it here just use ON. However, UPON it's far from dead.
We still use it in modern English and in some cases you must use UPON not ON. Here are a
few cases where you can use both without any difference in meaning. UPON might sound more
formal or literary you would notice from examples of phrasal verbs we often use
UPON, as I said, with a formal, a literary or an abstract meaning. You could also use ON like this
but when you're talking about literally physical things, doing physical things you must use ON
not UPON. Let's look at some examples. ‘I depend upon this job for my income.’
to build upon ‘we should build upon our success.’ If you are literally
rather than metaphorically building then use ON. ‘We are building on the field over there.’
LOOK UPON. ‘I look upon you as a brother even though you're a girl.’ TO FROWN UPON which means
to disapprove of something. ‘Relationships with colleagues are frowned upon in this organization.’
‘Not recycling your waste is frowned upon in society.’ TO STUMBLE UPON which means
to learn about something by chance. ‘I stumbled upon an interesting video about cockney accent
when I was watching youtube.’ ‘I stumbled upon an interesting bar while I was wandering around
the neighborhood.’ You can also use STUMBLE ON or STUMBLE ACROSS but STUMBLE UPON is more common if
you literally stumble that is, you trip up or you walk into an object and almost fall over you must
use STUMBLE ON. ‘I had almost finished the race when I stumbled on the last hurdle.’ So you see
UPON is often used with a figurative or abstract meaning ON is always the one you use when it's a
literal meaning never UPON. INSIST UPON or INSISTI ON. ‘You're coming to dinner tonight
and I insist upon it.’ Here are some more phrasal verbs with UPON in most cases you can also use ON
but I've chosen the ones where UPON is the more common version. Even though both can be used
sometimes there is a nuance in meaning, or at least the ON version has a slightly different
energy. By the way, if you're not sure which is more common ON or UPON I'll show you a trick
about that in a moment. Let's just have a look at a couple more from the list but I'm not going to
go through all of them, that's your homework. TO ACT UPON ‘I have some information that will
change everything and I intend to act upon it.’ HANG UPON now HANG ON has several meanings,
hang the picture on the wall etc but HANG UPON has a very specific meaning
and that is to have an intense interest for something OK so for example, ‘she was the
most interesting person I had ever met and I sat there bewitched, hanging upon her every word.’
TO HIT UPON to suddenly realize that something is a good idea. ‘You know I think I've hit upon the
perfect title for my new book.’ OK and here's that trick I promised you. I have mentioned it before
it's the ngram. Go to books.google.com/ngrams compare two or three phrases separated by a comma.
Let's try FROWNED ON versus FROWNED UPON as you can see the FROWNED UPON version is more common.
Let's try STUMBLE UPON versus STUMBLED ON versus STUMBLED ACROSS. Here you are STUMBLED UPON is the
most common. This won't always work if a phrasal verb has more than one meaning such as HANG ON
then it's not going to work because you're not comparing like with like but it often works.
So let's have a look at some cases where you must use UPON. TO TAKE SOMETHING UPON YOURSELF,
which means to take responsibility and control of something. ‘I took it upon myself to read
all of Shakespeare's plays.’ ‘I took it upon myself to watch all of LetThemTalkTV’s videos’
UPON meaning immediately after. ‘Upon leaving university I got a job at Walton and Grimshaw’
‘Upon entering the room I was greeted by a hearty round of applause.’
This is quite a literary way of expression. It sounds good, more poetic than straight after
or ‘immediately after leaving university.’ Upon finishing recording the video Gideon
ate 12 doughnuts and drank a matcha latte.’ TO BE UPON US which means to talk about the arrival of
a season or some period of time ‘Christmas is upon us.’ ‘Summer is upon us, I’d better get my
speedos down from the attic I'm going swimming.’ ‘The exam season is upon us, I’d better
do some revision.’ Once again it's quite formal and quite literally but it's fairly common and an
interesting way to express yourself. Try next time instead of saying spring has finally arrived say
spring is upon us I can't wait to go into the forest and pick, um I don't know, strawberries
whatever. Next if you want to say that there is more and more of something and the something seems
endless, replace MORE with the quantity of the thing you are talking about and replace AND with
UPON then say the thing. It would be easier if I give you some examples. ‘From the top of the hill
we could see miles upon miles of desert.’ ‘Summer is upon us and we have weeks upon weeks of sunny
days.’ ‘People left the city when the factory closed, now all you see are rows upon rows
of empty houses.’ And as I'm sure you know, every good fairy tale starts with once upon a time.
So now you know the difference between ON and UPON so
go out into the big wide world and use it grammarians stay healthy and see you next time bye