Could you please explain what the difference in usage is between through and via, which sounds like a Latinism?
Are they completely interchangeable?
differenceslatinprepositionssynonyms
Could you please explain what the difference in usage is between through and via, which sounds like a Latinism?
Are they completely interchangeable?
Best Answer
Using via as a preposition in English is of comparatively recent provenance. It has substantially fewer primary senses, and therefore available uses, than does through. The OED gives only two main senses for via as a preposition, which I include here with a few of each one’s later citations:
Here are some examples of through (taken from the OED’s citation list for that preposition) where you could not substitute in via in its stead:
In contrast, in these examples from the same source, one perhaps might be able to make that swap:
So even though though there are a few places where you can use via or through — or else via and by — interchangeably as prepositions, there are many others where you cannot.
Finally, it should be noted that there are substantive, adjectival, and adverbial uses of both words, and that these non-prepositional uses are never interchangeable.