via Alamy "I was very into curating and collecting" – Christopher Bastin, artistic director of the fashion house Gant, Spring 2023. I can't help being delighted and appalled at the same time by the extraordinary journey this innocent preposition "into" has undergone over the last half-century. Like many English prepositions, it has been hauled about all over the place in many syntactical contexts, but to find it standing proud as an adjective in its own right, with its own superlative – "very" - as well, takes one by surprise.
For comparison, take another preposition, "round" and treat it the same way. If you turn "round" into its comparative, "rounder", or superlative, "roundest", you have performed some neat sleight of hand, smuggling an adjective into the place of the preposition. If you speak of "the roundest ball", you are describing the ball's shape, not its position.
To describe where the ball is, you would choose another word, say "nearest" - near being a preposition denoting place. "Into" is similarly a preposition denoting place, with a strong implication of movement from one point to another, either..
. Andrew Wilton.
