Do trees "fall down" or "fall over"? [closed]
Solution 1:
Fall is a verb with a lot of action. It can apply to humans
(most verbs can apply to humans, one way or another;
after all, that's mostly what we talk about)
or trees, or birds, or rain, or temperature, or prices, or rocks, or snow, ..., etc.
And it means different things in each case. The basic meaning has several components:
- something that falls is moving downward (i.e, gravity is acting on it)
- something that falls is uncontrolled (i.e, nothing counteracts gravity)
- therefore, it is accelerated until some other force (like air resistance) counteracts its motion
- something that falls will not move indefinitely (i.e, there is a bottom)
Feathers fall slowly because of air resistance; above a certain weight, everything falls at the same acceleration.
Those are the physical requirements, which all humans have observed. The way we use the verb varies as to object. Note that things that fall may simply appear in the air and then move down, like rain. Trees are already rooted in the ground, and humans are always standing on some ground, though we can move around.
So how do we modify the verb fall for trees and humans? It turns out to depend on how they fall.
Humans, when they fall, tend to fold up, and so they end up in one place close to where their feet started. We call that falling down because the falling motion is largely vertical.
Trees, on the other hand, are much taller than humans, and much more rigid; they don't fold at all. They rotate from the trunk and the entire tree length falls as a descending unit, often damaging other neighboring trees. We call that falling over, because over is a circular term and refers to the moment of inertia of angular rotation. A human can fall over, too, if they are standing up and stay vertical throughout the fall; but normally we don't.
There are plenty of other metaphors, phrasal verbs, and idioms involved with motion.
Humans move around a lot, and talk about moving around a lot.
Solution 2:
,Trees do both. Down implies "to the ground/completely"
Over is vaguer and less commonly used - it may mean
(i) "all the way to the ground" particularly if the tree is in a large pot or container, but
(ii) can indicate that the tree has only fallen through, say 45 degrees and is perhaps supported by another tree and
(iii) is mainly used with another phrase or clause - "The tree fell over onto the house." / "The tree fell over and killed a woman", etc. This is related to (ii) as the fall in not ""to the ground/completely**"