‘I wonder,’ writes Kim Parsons from Helston, or nearby, ‘if you have seen the new government-generated No Smoking signs which declare: “It is against the law to smoke in these premises.” Since when has on in this context become in?’’
I have seen the signs, because there is one at the church door in my parish, even though the incense continues to rise within. I suppose a church is ‘premises’, but the classic context of premises comes in the quotation from a licensing Act written above many an inn door, permitting the named proprietor ‘to retail beer, wine, spirits, and tobacco to be consumed on the premises’. What happens to the tobacco now that it can neither be legally sold for consumption off the premises nor legally be consumed on them, I do not know, unless it is chewed.
I think the horrible usage in the premises must come from some literal imagination of an enclosed space.
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