'never' and 'for three years'

Hello

How does the sentence below sound to you?

“I’ve never seen him for three years”

Can we use “never” together with “for three years”?


Hanako

Depends on what you want to say.

I've never seen him for three years - ie, he's never been around for 3 whole years at a time, maybe he doesn't like to stay in the same place for long and is always shifting around... Probably you should clarify, though it's ok.

It sounds off to me. As Guest stated, it may be okay if you clarified a bit, but it really does depend on the context.

To my ears, "I haven't seen him for three years," or better yet, "I haven't seen him in three years," sound much better.

Assuming I got your meaning, the correct way to say it is
"I've not seen him for 3 years," or
"I haven't seen him for 3 years," or
"I have not seen him for 3 years."
You can also replace the word "for" with the word "in".
"I have not seen him in three years."
The last one, with "in", sounds better to me, but I think that both prepositions are correct in this case.