Learn English – Flee from vs flee

prepositional-phrasesprepositionstransitivityverbsword-usage

Look at the following sentences.

  1. Many people fled the city to escape the fighting.

  2. Refugees fled from the city.

  3. They fled the country in 1987.

  4. The family fled from Nazi Germany to Britain in 1936.

I am puzzled by the term flee. As you can see that sometimes flee is followed by no preposition whereas sometimes it is followed by a preposition as above.

How to know that it will and will not be followed by a preposition?

Kindly elaborate it.

Best Answer

flee

implicitly means to move away from something, moving "away" is implied.

fled the city
fled from the city

have the same meaning, from is not necessary and some might consider it redundant, but both are correct. However, in the case of

fled to the city

the preposition to must be there to mean movement "towards", otherwise it will have the the opposite meaning as in the first sentence.

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