I’ve always used the former, but more and more I hear people saying “graduated college” and lately I’ve even been seeing it in print. Which is the preferred from nowadays?
I’ve always thought they were interchangeable.
Ditto. I’ve not seen that either usage is preferred.
Anyone who says he “graduated college” would lead me to think that he probably didn’t even go there. This just sounds wrong to me.
For my money, the college graduates you, while you graduate from college.
Merriam-Webster has an interesting usage note which seems to indicate that you can do whatever you want.
Trivia: The original usage of the word called for “I was graduated from college” rather than “I graduated from college.” The idea was that graduation was something that the school did to you, instead of something you did.
This usage, of course, looks ungrammatical without the “from,” but it’s rarely seen anymore.****
“Graduated college” sounds more U.K. and “graduated from college” more U.S.
“Graduated college” makes me twitchy, but I do hear it more often than I used to.
Don’t you mean “HAS one ‘graduated college’ or ‘graduated from college?’”
::d&r::
The standard usage here is to graduate from university.
Clearly that is what I intended. In re-wriing my question, I accidently forgot to change the verb.
I’m glad I don’t hear it without “from” more often, because that would make me twitchy too. That formation sounds British to me, given they often leave out articles where we’d use them too (“to the hospital” vs “to hospital” etc).
“Graduated college” sounds as wrong to me as “needs washed” (i.e. *very *wrong).