Learn English – Difference between ‘amazing at’ and ‘amazing in’

prepositions

She is amazing ———- painting.

What's the difference between amazing at and amazing in?

What would be used, at or in? And also tell me what is the grammatical role of painting in the sentence.

Best Answer

I feel like amazing at/in will (more or less) follow the same pattern as good at/in. This is likely because the two words reflect something positive about the subject.

In and at are sometimes interchangeable. In this case, I would use at:

  1. She is good at painting. → She is amazing at painting*.

According to this post, good at is generally used with activities. It provides other examples:

  1. He’s good at football.
  2. She’s good at product design.
  3. Her mother is good at Trivial Pursuit.
  4. When Fatima was only six, she was good at drawing.

In each case, you can swap good with amazing and each case remains idiomatic.

The post also makes a note about academics. It says

When it comes to school subjects, both “good at” and “good in” are used.

For example,

  1. Max is good at math.
  2. Max is good in math.

Of course, these are general guidelines. There are exceptions.

  1. She's good in bed

This means she's good at sex. You cannot replace in with at in 8 because bed is not an activity.

This can sometimes be extended to other places where activities are done (as this post points out), for example

  1. He's good in the kitchen. (He's good at cooking; He cooks well.)

You can swap good with amazing in the previous examples and they should sound fine. Other positive descriptions, like skillful, should work too. Again, this is a rough guideline and there probably more exceptions.

*You can rewrite this as "She is an amazing painter." I prefer this over the original, although the original is ok.

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