The following paragraph is from "Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2" written by Jeff Kinney.
I'm sure our Giving Tree guy will throw his sweater in the trash, along with the ten cans of yams we sent his way during the Thanksgiving Food Drive.
It seems that there are a lot of usages of "way", and I don't understand how it's used in this sentence. What does "we sent his way" mean?
I can't find any explanation of that kind of usage even after checking in a couple of online dictionaries.
Best Answer
In this context, way = direction, so it means we sent ten cans of yams in his direction, towards him.
It's an informal idiomatic expression which can always be replaced by to [whoever], but sometimes that underlying "literal" meaning imparts a slight nuance. For example, you might be slightly more inclined to use it if you're diverting something that would otherwise have been sent somewhere else. Or if the recipient/location/route you're sending it to/through is somehow "non-standard" for the thing being sent.