That rule isn’t universal though. “I go to the dentist every year” doesn’t imply that I particularly care about a specific dentist (or, case in point, about the specific dentist).

“This was a nice evening” is also difficult to characterize as not caring about which evening it is. As are books titled “An Introduction to XYZ”, where both the authors and the readers will probably care about the specific book.

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rawling 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm going to the bank, the shop, the dentist, the pool - I have a regular one in mind and you may well also know which one I mean.

I'm going to a bank, a shop, a dentist - I've found a new one and I may well be about to describe it to you.

"A nice evening" - there have been ones before, there hopefully will be again, this was one of them.

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layer8 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but that’s different from “you do/don't care which one”.

	▲	shhsshs 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		“Care” may not be the correct word, but in those examples the difference is whether you are referring to a specific instance, or any instance of a group. When you say “I went to the doctor,” you did in fact go to a specific doctor (or “I will go to the doctor” meaning you will go to one). It would be equally valid to say “I went to a doctor”, it’s just less specific.

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SilasX 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, on that note: the construction “I went to the store” has always felt wrong to me as a native speaker. People say it even when that store lacks definiteness in context (ie the listener has no reason to know which one you mean). At the very least, it counts as a separate usage of “the” that doesn’t follow the usual pattern, like when you say “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”.

Edit: Here's a frustrating HN thread where someone tried to claim it makes sense, but it turned out his argument hinged on "well obviously all native English speakers regularly go to some store, right?" Screw the homebound.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32620015

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lawsthro0532 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Looking at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/english-language/definite...

I think the usage falls into this group: "The first group consists of nouns which refer to shared knowledge of the situation or context...",

When you're talking to people you live with it is true that they know which store you are going to. Friends and neighbours would have also have known up to fairly recently, when people still mostly walked for groceries and such to the few small stores nearby and made friends with people who lived close.

So, I'd say it's a bit of a colloquial hold over from walking times and construction taking a listener into confidence.

	▲	SilasX 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>When you're talking to people you live with it is true that they know which store you are going to. But again, people use this even when I have no reason to know which store they went to. I’m not necessarily saying they should stop doing this, but it’s clearly not the usual kind of definiteness implied but the use of “the”.

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5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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margalabargala 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Beyond that, there are cases where you absolutely are referring to a specific one, but use a/an.

"Our house has a pool" for example. There is a very specific pool being referred to, but it's sufficiently indirect that "the" would never be used here without radically changing sentence meaning.

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elendilm 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe it must be considered from the perspective of the speaker. He may have a particular dentist in mind when he says "the dentist" and maybe the listener not having privy to it may not be relevant.

And he may be saying "a" about the word "nice" instead of about the word "evening".

Note: This is just my opinion and an attempt at trying to make sense of it. Purely subjective take as I usually refrain from making purely opinion based arguments.