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I made up a sentence:

She sold the house that she lived in in her childhood

Obviously, these 2 "in" relate to different words in the sentence, but is it natural and idiomatic?

I've heard natives use similar structure of the sentence countless times but with 2 different prepositions e.g. "She hated the man she was married to in her twenties".

Should I rephrase my sentence because I have 2 identical prepositions in a row?

DialFrost
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Mr. Past Progressive
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    No, it doesn't sound odd. –  Jun 05 '22 at 08:03
  • If youve made the sentence, is there any reason not to use "during"? – James K Jun 05 '22 at 08:18
  • It does sound clumsy to me but, as James says, you can change the sentence in many ways to avoid it - _the house where she lived_ or _when she was a child_, for example. – Kate Bunting Jun 05 '22 at 12:39
  • It might sound a bit more odd if we had ***three*** consecutive instances of ***in*** here, but it could still be perfectly grammatical - if her mother was a "live-in" domestic servant, so she she "lived **in**" along with her mother, **in** (within) that house, **in** (during) her childhood. – FumbleFingers Jun 05 '22 at 12:45

1 Answers1

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It is not really a problem, the two "in"s are different in function. The first is part of the phrasal verb "live in", and the second is a prepostion.

However, as there are very simple ways to avoid this, you can improve your sentence either by using "during" (which is a more precise preposition of time) or in formal writing "the house in which she lived".

James K
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