Which preposition should I use with the word "intuition"?

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shiqangpan
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Which preposition should I use with the word "intuition"?

Post by shiqangpan »

With the meaning "A thing (or knowledge) that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning", which preposition should I use with the word "intuition", "towards" or "about"?

An entry on Lexico(Oxford) https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/intuition uses "intuition" with the preposition "about", in the example "As an illustration, consider our intuitions about brain-transplants", which is easy to understand. I guess the use there is similar to "knowledge about something".

However, a video (https://youtu.be/VTQzGt3Er3Q?t=57) uses it with "towards", in "Here we are given a first look at a very simple example of HTML throughout this lesson we will be using the same bit of HTML while we gain intuition towards HTML navigation before playing with much longer and more involved examples." Is it because "we" has not got the "intuition" he is talking about yet?

Is my understand correct?
OccamsRazor
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Re: Which preposition should I use with the word "intuition"?

Post by OccamsRazor »

Intuition is a feeling.

You can have a feeling about something. (e.g., dread)
You can have a feeling towards someone. (e.g., anger)

Do you have any intuition about why he might do that?
Do you have an intuition towards this subject (in regards to this subject)?

GoogleTrends is an excellent tool to see which of these two phrases is more common.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... %20towards

"Intuition about" is MUCH more common than "intuition towards".
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