My wife is exercising while my child is running around close to her.
Is it correct for me to say "stay away from her or else she might hit her elbows on your face" or "stay away from her or else she might hit you on the face with her elbows"?
When we say "she might hit you on the face", "hit” here implies “hit on purpose” but mom didn’t intend to do that.
but when we say “I hit my knee on the table” means I did it by accident not on purpose.
So, the question is whether I can say “she might hit her elbows on your face”.
Best Answer
Neither option is really incorrect from a grammar standpoint but a native speaker would not use either of them. We don't say that someone "hits on someone's face." On is used more when your face (or other part of your body) hits some inanimate object, like "I smacked my face on the open cabinet door" or in your example "I hit my knee on the table."
Instead we use "with" to indicate the object used to hit your face: