Grammar

Question

I've read the following sentence in a book:

He had choked on far too big a morsel.

I think, that's right, of course. But it sounds a little bit strange and unusual to me. Is it not better to say:

He had choked on a far too big morsel.

If the first order clause would be correct, can I also say:

I've eaten very mild a cheese. Instead of: I've eaten a very mild cheese. ?

Thank you in advance!

Veit

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

file tile 16it sounds a little bit strange and unusual to me.

Not to this well-read lifelong, and I do mean long, speaker of US English.

file tile 16Is it not better to say:He had choked on a far too big morsel.

Not at all. For one thing, you would have to hyphenate the complex adjective "far-too-big" because it comes before its noun. He ate a morsel that was far too big, a far-too-big morsel. I don't make the rules.

More importantly, "far too adjective a noun" is highly idiomatic within English. It can also appear with other words of comparison besides "too"—so tall a tree that the squirrels got nosebleeds, as fast a runner as him could have gotten away from the man-eating housecats.

By the way, the original sentence is flawed. It reads like he had the option of choking on a smaller morsel. I think the writer was trying to say that he choked on a morsel that was far too big. Even though it is closer to the intended sense of the sentence, to try to use "a far-too-big morsel" would reveal lack of fluency, and it is not the same as the idiom under consideration.

file tile 16If the first order clause would be correct, can I also say: I've eaten very mild a cheese. Instead of: I've eaten a very mild cheese. ?

No. There has to be a comparison, as in "I've eaten much milder a cheese than that one many times."

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