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Moon7296 Posted 13 years ago
Vocabulary

(a) promise /

In our youth, we wake up expecting that something wonderful will happen to us and that our lives will be changed. This does not cease with youth. Each day remains new and fresh. Each day is a dawn of promise. However, we come to know that the promise is different. It is no longer the romantic promise of some joy that is beyond understanding. It is a promise of gaining some insight, or feeling something deeply or, seeing some of the beauty and grandeur in the world.

Q) There's no article in the first "promise" underlined unlike the later "promise"s underlined.
I wonder if they have different meaning that makes the first "promise" not have an article like others.(Especially when it is compared the fourth one (a promise) )
  

Top answer

It is just the regular countable/uncountable difference with and without the article, but I would say that the writer took a liberty using uncountable "promise" that way, and it strikes my ear as overreaching by a writer with less skill than inspiration. Uncountable "promise" in its usual sense would mean that the day showed promise, that it was a promising day, that one would expect good things to come simply because of the nature of that particular day, but that is not what the writer means—he means that any day has a quality he calls "promise". Try replacing "promise" with "hope" or some other word of the kind that you are more familiar with.

— Enoon

  • It is just the regular countable/uncountable difference with and without the article, but I would say that the writer took a liberty using uncountable "promise" that way, and it strikes my ear as overreaching by a writer with less skill than inspiration.
  • Uncountable "promise" in its usual sense would mean that the day showed promise, that it was a promising day, that one would expect good things to come simply because of the nature of that particular day, but that is not what the writer means—he means that any day has a quality he calls "promise".
  • Try replacing "promise" with "hope" or some other word of the kind that you are more familiar with.
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1 Answers
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It is just the regular countable/uncountable difference with and without the article, but I would say that the writer took a liberty using uncountable "promise" that way, and it strikes my ear as overreaching by a writer with less skill than inspiration. Uncountable "promise" in its usual sense would mean that the day showed promise, that it was a promising day, that one would expect good things t
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