BY CONTRAST/BY COMPARISON

Question

Could you please help me with this?The first floor is better than living on the sixth floor by contrast/by comparison.Can you gage someone's coldness in contrast to someone else's./in comparison to someone else's.(how cold they are at one point during the day)Can you give me example with BY COMPARISON AND BY CONTRAST? Are they interchangeable?Thank you

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

I don't know how to answer your question. I usually say in comparison (to).

In comparison to living on the sixth floor, living on the first floor is better.
Living on the first floor is better [in comparison to / than] living on the sixth floor.

I don't personally substitute contrast for comparison in sentences like these, but you could do that if you wanted to. The two are often interchangeable.

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Your second example is unidiomatic. Maybe you're talking about someone's temperature, as when they have a fever.

Can you tell whether someone has a fever just by looking at them?

CJ

Alc24 · Answer

Thank you CJ

For the GAGE ....

If someone always wears a jacket and is always cold ans someone else wears t shirts and is never cold, than if you compare the two,

1 Could you gage someone body temperature in relation to yours?

2 You can tell whether someone has a lower resistance to the cold in relation to you, from what he wears.

Can you tell me what you think about these 2 and how you would correct it?

Thank you

CalifJim · Answer

a. It occurs to me that you are not really talking about "body temperature". I think your native language may have a word that has to do with a person's ability to tolerate cold or heat, and English doesn't have that word. In English we have to paraphrase with "tolerate", "take", or, possibly, "endure" (the cold / the heat).

b. The word is gauge, though it is pronounced as if gage. But note that we often say "tell" instead of "gauge".

c. It's better to use "than" (if it fits the context) instead of "in relation to".

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Here are a few sentences that I think get your point across. (The first one, with "body temperature", won't do at all. I suggested that before I completely understood what you were trying to say.)

You can gauge how cold-tolerant someone is by how much clothing they need to wear to feel comfortable in cold weather. / Can you gauge how ...?

You can tell how tolerant of the cold someone is by how much ... / Can you tell how ...?

You can tell if someone is more or less tolerant of (the) cold than you are [by observing / from] what he wears.
You can tell if someone is [more / less] tolerant of (the) cold than you ...
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You can use "resistant (to)", but in my opinion, it's less used than "tolerant (of)".

You can tell if someone has a [lower / higher] resistance to (the) cold than you (do) from what he wears. [No comma.]
You can tell if someone is [less / more] resistant to (the) cold than ...
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"take" is sometimes used.

He seems able to take the cold better than his brother.
I'm going inside. I just can't take the cold any longer.
You can tell from all those layers of clothes that Steve doesn't take the cold very well.

CJ

Alc24 · Answer

Hello CJ

I just read this and wanted to know if the question was good?

Can you tell whether someone has a lower or higher resistance to the cold than you from what he has on?

Thank you

CalifJim · Answer

alc24I just read this and wanted to know if the question was good?

Can you tell whether someone has a lower or higher resistance to the cold than you from what he has on?Yes. That question is grammatical. You can say that.

Just a side note. You can also use resistant instead of resistance, thus:

Can you tell whether someone is more or less resistant to the cold than you from what he has on?

As you already know from our discussion above, you can also substitute tolerance for resistance or tolerant for resistant in those sentences.

CJ

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