turn down

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blouen

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She's turned down all four offers.
She turned all four offers down.



* Which one sounds more natural?
 

aggelos

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To me, the first one.
 

aggelos

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For what it's worth, here are the results from a Google search:

"turned all four offers down": 1 result (this thread!)
"turned down all four offers": 3 results (including the find from this thread)

"turned the job down": 11700
"turned down the job": 161000

And I hope you didn't base your choice on She's turned/She turned. The use of present perfect or past tense depends on context; they can both be correct in the proper context.
 

blouen

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And I hope you didn't base your choice on She's turned/She turned. The use of present perfect or past tense depends on context; they can both be correct in the proper context.

* No, not the she's/she here... Actually, they should be the same in the original question... It was just a typo that I made.

Both expressions mean the same.
It's not how many people use it, but which of these expressions would sound more native and fluent?
 

aggelos

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Ok. Here are all the examples from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary for turn down. As you can see, in none of them is the noun object to be found between turn and down, it's always after. When the object is a pronoun (it/him etc.), it is placed in between - actually it has to, this is a grammatical rule, as I believe you know. If the object is a noun, the rule says that you can either put it before or after the adverb (here: down). So both of your examples are technically correct, but I'll insist that the word order in your first example is the preferred choice. All the more so, since you're using not just one but three words (all four offers).

He offered her a trip to Australia but she turned it/him down.
He turned down the job because it involved too much travelling.
She turned down the opportunity to work in Paris.
He asked her to marry him, but she turned him down.
I heard that he turned down a knighthood.
He turned down the chance to have his own exhibition.
Would you turn down the chance to meet Nelson Mandela?
We politely turned down the invitation.
 

blouen

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You starting to sound well to me now, and I think you got a point.:-D

Thanks!
 
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