Excited for vs. about

My mother always corrected me when I said I was excited for an event. Because you're the one who will have a great time, not the party. But lately I've been hearing "excited for" more and more, and today it was on the cover of my local paper. The headline read that Bon Jovi was excited for his concert. Any comments?

It sounds horrible to me. No idea if the construction is on the rise, though. Usage shifts.

I'm excited for my son, who has been accepted at a very good college. He is excited about their theatre and computer departments.

It sounds a more American thing than a British thing. I've not heard people being excited for an event.

I haven't heard of anyone being excited for an event either, but if it becomes common usage in the U.S.A. it will surely be heard here in Australia before long. I don't like it.

If it's American, it must be regional. I haven't heard that usage in California.

"Excited for" sounds perfectly normal and natural to me in the US Midwest.

Excited for something, not for somebody?

To me, raised in the US Midwest but living in England, "excited for" sounds a bit strange, and I could only interpret it as "vicariously excited on behalf of" (or something like that -- exactly as MarthaJeanne used it in #3). If something excites me, I'm "excited about" or "by" it.

Something that I am "excited for" wouldn't be something that excited me directly, but that was itself excited "about" or "by" something else.

Similarly, if I felt bad for someone, they didn't make me feel bad, but something bad happened to them. If something bad happened to me, I would feel bad about it. I could be disappointed for a friend who didn't get a job, but I would be disappointed about not getting the job myself.

Thanks for the input. To clarify, I live in New Jersey.

"excited for /something/" sounds OK to me, though I'd be less likely to say it than "excited by /something/". I live in Chicago, and have lived in the US Midwest my whole life. I also have a PhD in linguistics, and am pretty aware of regional differences in usage.

'excited for {a person}' is well established, as is 'thrilled for' and 'hurting for'. They express a sympathetic emotion in support of another, however awkwardly in my opinion. But being 'exited for {an event} is surely a misuse in which 'for' is replacing 'by'.

Yet another example of preposition abuse. I suspect such ignorance stems from the decreasing use of the (professionally) written word for information gathering. People probably don't read as much, but most people seem to write, whether they're properly educated or not, and most people jumble collections of words into 'stream-of-semi-consciousness', like, sentences, know what I mean, innit, like.

Edited to correct for LT's hi-jacking use of brackets.

>12 CliffordDorset:: I realize that people don't think about what they write most of the time. But I would hope that I think more about what I write in a school paper than I do about what I write here. My original example was from the front page of the paper the Star Ledger. That bothers me more than when I hear the construction in conversation or see it in an e-mail from a fellow pharmacy student.

>11 dkathman:: My mom has a master's degree in linguistics and this drives her nuts. I don't know what the official grammarian's verdict is, but I think what bothers us is how ridiculous the user seems when you literally interpret "excited for"... I just know the Superbowl is going to have a great time here in Jersey, I'm really excited for it.

Yes, it's really difficult to envision a thing having feelings so that you could be excited for it. I haven't noticed this misusage, but it's the kind of thing that takes on a life of its own, unfortunately 8-(

It's clearly a mid-west thing. I've lived in Ohio my whole life and to be honest I never even thought of it as "the event" being excited. It sounds perfectly natural to me.

I've been excited for about 60-something years. Doctors say there's no cure ...

Agreeing with the other mid-west opinions.

Michigan resident here, to whom being "excited for" a given event sounds perfectly normal. In fact, it took me a moment to understand what distinction was being made and why.

After thinking about it, I could see the reasoning. Really though, even with a handful of college English courses, I didn't see it as "wrong", nor can remember being taught so.