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Zuotengdazuo Posted 7 years ago
Grammar

Than is ever likely/going to be available

Dr Weitbrecht-Rotholz belongs to that school of historians which believes that human nature is not only about as bad as it can be, but a great deal worse; and certainly the reader is safer of entertainment in their hands than in those of the writers who take a malicious pleasure in representing the great figures of romance as patterns of the domestic virtues. For my part, I should be sorry to think that there was nothing between Antony and Cleopatra but an economic situation; and it will require a great deal more evidence than is ever likely to be available, thank God, to persuade me that Tiberius was as blameless a monarch as King George V.

Excerpt from
The Moon and Sixpence

W Somerset Maugham

Hi. How should I understand the underlined part grammatically and semantically?

And can we say “than is ever going to be available” to mean the same thing?

Thank you.

  

Top answer

zuotengdazuo Hi. How should I understand the underlined part grammatically and semantically? Some words are ellipted.

— Teechr

  • zuotengdazuo Hi.
  • How should I understand the underlined part grammatically and semantically?
  • Some words are ellipted.
  • Look at the text I added.
  • Does that help?
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3 Answers
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zuotengdazuoHi. How should I understand the underlined part grammatically and semantically?

Some words are ellipted. Look at the text I added. Does that help?

and it will require a great deal more evidence than (the amount of evidence that) is ever likely to be available

zuotengdazuoAn
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To comment further on this, I'm a native English speaker in the US and I'm having a hard time understanding this passage. What this appears to be is "filler." Maugham excelled as a short story writer but was not as good in longer works, where you have to, by necessity, fill in a lot of space in order to bulk up the work to novel-size proportions. That is, this is a lot of almost meaningless

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zuotengdazuocan we say “than is ever going to be available” to mean means the same thing?

Yes.

zuotengdazuomore evidence than is ever likely to be available

It is not likely that more evidence will be available at any time in the future.

CJ

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