HURRYING

This is a small type, consisting of verbs that describe the speed with which an activity is performed; hesitate falls naturally into the same type.

Complement possibilities are:

Modal (FOR) TO and ING complements—hurry (over/with), hesitate (over/with) most used with Modal (FOR) TO, can also take ING—hasten (over/with) ING complement only—dawdle (over)

The prepositions are, as usual, retained before an ING clause or an NP, but dropped before to, e.g. He hurried over finishing the job, He hurried to finish the job.

Hurry and hasten have a very similar meaning, ‘do quickly’, with hurry having stronger overtones of ‘motion’ than hasten. Thus both of He hurried/hastened to change the lock on the door can mean either (i) he moved quickly to the door, to change the lock when he got there, or (ii) he was quick about taking the old lock off and putting a new one on; but interpretation (i) is more likely with hurry and (ii) is more likely with hasten.

Hurry can freely take either a Modal (FOR) TO or an ING clause, e.g. He hurried over (eating) his meal (ate quickly the whole time), and He hurried to finish his meal (ate quickly towards the end). Hasten is found quite rarely with an ING clause. Dawdle, with the opposite meaning ‘do slowly’, only takes an ING complement.

Hesitate accepts both complement types. An ING clause implies that there was initial uncertainty but that the subject did it, in the end (unless the contrary is explicitly stated), e.g. She hesitated about/over going. A Modal (FOR) TO complement with hesitate indicates that the subject couldn’t make up their mind whether or not to do it (and probably didn’t do it, in the end), e.g. She hesitated to go. (There is further comment on the semantics of these complement choices)

As with try, a verb may be omitted after hurry or dawdle if its identity could be inferred from the nature of subject and object and shared sociocultural knowledge of speaker and hearer, e.g. She hurried/dawdled over (arranging) the flowers, The doctor hurried/dawdled over (examining) the last patient. Verb omission is also possible with hesitate, e.g. Auntie Daphne hesitated over (choosing) a present for Karen, but is rare after hasten. Any of these four verbs may be used alone (i.e. just with a subject) in an appropriate context, e.g. Hurry up!, Don’t dawdle!; and we get omission triggered by the surrounding text, e.g. Mary hesitated (over going) before (in fact) going.

Hurry and hasten, but not the other two verbs, form causatives, e.g. John hurried/hastened Mary out of the house, corresponding to Mary hurried/ hastened (to go) out of the house.