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"He was steeped in a to many people boring book?

English Language & Usage Asked by qweasd on April 23, 2021

I am confused in the use and name of a class of adjectives similar to the following example:

He was steeped in a to many people boring book.

Which has the meaning of "He was steeped in a book that is boring for many people." Is that grammatically and semantically correct?

One Answer

That very particular sentence is very hard to read, so most people would say it is 'ungrammatical'.

However, the pattern that it seems to allude, a not uncommon one, while not formal (and so ungrammatical or rather unacceptable in a newspaper or formal speech) is to use an extended noun phrase syntactically like a preposed noun-attribute, modifying the following head noun.

To modify your example a tiny bit:

He was reading a boring-to-too-many-people book.

This is very informal and would not make it past an editor or school teacher and called horribly ungrammatical. That said, it is a pattern that many native speakers use very informally (the way to say this is that the pattern is 'grammatical in a particular informal register').

The sentence would be translated to a more formal register as

He was reading a book that was boring to too many people.

As with lots of informalities like this, if you are a non-native speaker, I would avoid using this kind of pattern because it will sound like a mistake if said with an accent. For a native speaker, it should probably be avoided in more than informal circumstances.

Correct answer by Mitch on April 23, 2021

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