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"Their hunt the roast vegetable sauce": can you parse this?

English Language & Usage Asked on August 24, 2021

An old A 2002 magazine sports the ad pictured below, juxtaposing

Their hunt the roast vegetable sauce.

with "Our roast vegetable sauce." There’s something funny going on in the syntax of the former phrase, that actually made me pay some attention to it. I can’t put my finger on what it is though.

Presumably this may be an elliptic construction ("their hunt [after/for/of] the roast vegetable sauce"), where "the roast vegetable sauce" would be in a genitive position. Just as well, this might be just a set phrase, no longer productive.

Is there a name for this type of construction, explaining how this syntax links to a semantics, and/or other examples of the phenomenon?

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2 Answers

I had to read it a couple of times before it made sense, but the meaning is

Their 'hunt the roast vegetable' sauce.

In other words, Sainsburys claim that their sauce has many more pieces of vegetable in it than their rivals' sauces have.

Correct answer by Kate Bunting on August 24, 2021

They are implying that the competition's sauce has so little roast vegetables, you practically have to hunt around in the sauce to find any.

Their Roast Vegetable Sauce.

vs

Our Roast Vegetable Sauce.


Their "hunt for the roast vegetables because they're so rare" Roast Vegetable Sauce.

vs

Our "clearly has roast vegetables, you can tell without having to hunt for them" Roast Vegetable Sauce.

Answered by Ben on August 24, 2021

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