Bought in, bought on, bought from, bought at? [closed]

Solution 1:

I would go with:

I bought this bike in the sporting goods department.

I bought this bike from an online store.

I bought this bike on November 13.

I bought this bike at a sale.

Brief explanation:

There is often a "preferred" preposition for a given context, but there may be acceptable alternatives. A native speaker of the language often finds it quite easy to identify the correct preposition by ear.

The first one, "in" implies a particular subset of some set, for example, a specific location, or a date. "I bought this bike in the sporting goods department", or "I bought this bike in London", are examples of specific locations, but there are others. "I bought this bike in December" specifies a particular subset of time".

For the second, "from" seems most appropriate because you're taking/receiving something from the store (after exchanging money for it). Now "at" is probably acceptable, but I would consider it more suitable for a physical (bricks-and-mortar) store, e.g. "I bought this nice bike at the bike store". In some kinds of sale, "at" may even be the preferred preposition, e.g. at an auction. You would commonly say "I bought this beautiful landscape at the art auction held yesterday". "At" could also be used to denote a specific time, as in "I bought my bike at 1:15 PM." "From" would not be an adequate substitute in that sentence.

As for the third one, "on" is pretty much the only suitable preposition to be used when specifying the date on which something was done.

As for the fourth, the explanation is similar to the auction example I already detailed.