Worth

Question

Is it worth it?Is "worth" a preposition in the above question?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

AnonymousIs "worth" a preposition in the above question?

Yes. At least Merriam-Webster lists it as such.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

CalifJimYes. At least Merriam-Webster lists it as such.CJ

Thank you for the reply.

Englishmaven · Answer

I never really thought about "worth" before, but it doesn't seem like a preposition to me at all, though you are right about the dictionaries' claiming that it is. There are some arguments that it is an adjective. There is a short, but good, discussion of worth at

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15982/what-is-the-lexical-class-of-the-word-worth-when-used-in-a-sentence-like-is-t

CalifJim · Answer

Englishmavendiscussion of worth at

I can't say I'm thrilled about calling "worth" a preposition either, but that's what I found in the dictionary, and I didn't want to launch out into a big discussion over what I regard as a contrary but trivial point. In my opinion, when it comes to speaking and writing English correctly, nothing of importance hinges on getting the labels right in these murky cases where there are differences of opinion.

Thanks for the link. They say in that link that CGEL calls it an adjective, and CGEL is always right, so it must be true.

CJ

Fivejedjon · Answer

Questions such as this remind me of the futility, as I see it, of trying to shoehorn every word in every utterance in the English language into 6/7/8/9/10/  part of speech/word class/grammatical categories' systems.

Worth

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