etymologygrammarphrases
I've seen the phrase "sit the throne" in place of "sit on the throne." It's usually used in literary or poetic contexts, but it doeas appear to have "real" uses (right click any line to see combined usage), albeit not very many.
Is there any etymology or grammar underlying this usage, or is it merely an abbreviation of the "correct" structure?
(I tried Googling it, I really did, but all I got was a bunch of Bioshock Infinite spoilers.)
There is a nice explanation on ask.yahoo.
British fugitives in the 1800s would rub a herring across their trail, thereby diverting the bloodhounds that were hot in pursuit. In the 1920s, American investment bankers started calling preliminary prospectuses "red herrings" as a warning to investors that the documents were not complete or final and could be misleading.
Edit: Also there's this wiktionary entry
It originated from a news story by English journalist William Cobbett, c. 1805, in which he claimed that as a boy he used a red herring (a cured and salted herring) to mislead hounds following a trail; the story served as an extended metaphor for the London press, which had earned Cobbett's ire by publishing false news accounts regarding Napoleon.
The original telephone switchboards were literally patch boards: the caller and callee were physically connected with a wire (patch cable) to form a circuit.
Photo from here.
Best Answer
You are overthinking this. It is very common for verbs to have both transitive and intransitive senses. For instance,
Sit is the same. It has both transitive and intransitive senses.
To sit a throne is just another transitive usage for sit. It happens to be a rare one.