| ▲ | lawsthro0532 5 hours ago | |
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”. | ||