WAIT ON OR WAIT FOR?

As much as I realize that there are many differences between British English and American English, this one expression annoys the heck out of me! Most Americans (I’d even say nearly all of them because, to tell you the truth, I haven’t quite met one, who would use it correctly) say ‘wait on’ when they mean ‘wait for’. And me dear friends, these two prepositional phrases are not interchangeable!

While ‘wait for someone’ means the actual time of waiting (you know, a period when you stand somewhere waiting for a friend, a bus or a train etc to arrive …), ‘wait on someone’ actually means to serve as a waiter/waitress or as a retail clerk or even to bring somebody requested items.

So, there you go! How can such two different expressions be confused is simply beyond me! And my husband (as I’m sure many more people like him) does not understand why it makes such a big deal and why it ticks me off every time I hear someone say: “I’ll wait on you…”. And while I understand that American English is influenced by many other languages (as the whole country is a cluster of numerous different cultures) and that there are many people who simply speak English (or should I say American?) the way they speak their own language, which often result in quite improper sentences and phrases, I still claim that certain rules should not be broken. And the ones that do not happen to know any better should simply be educated instead of allowed to carry on and, what’s even worse, influence other to speak the same way. So next time someone tells me “I’ll wait on you…”, I think I will ask them to bring me a cup of coffee.