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One of these implies butlers ... and the other implies your friend is late. Learn more on today's episode of Grammar Minute!
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Grammar Minute — Waiting for vs. Waiting on. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Welcome to The Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language 60 seconds at a time. I'm Lauren Smith and I'm currently waiting on a package from Amazon. If you pictured me standing around in a suit with a fancy tray offering cocktails to my Amazon package, then congratulations. That is, in fact, what I said. To wait on exclusively means to serve. Waitresses wait on you when you're at a restaurant, for example. But if you take too long reading the menu and make your waitress stand there in awkward silence, then she's waiting for you. Waiting on and waiting for are not interchangeable. To recap, to wait on means to serve, accommodate, or look after. To wait for means to kick back and relax until someone else is ready. That's your grammar minute. Visit thegrammarminute.com for more tips and tricks.
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