Hi!

I'm trying to put together a comprehensive list of English adjectives that, in linguistic terms, "license Measure Phrases (MPs)".

In non-professional terms, this means I am looking for English adjectives that combine with measurements.

The easiest way to explain what I am looking for is using examples.

Consider these adjective constructions (the MPs are in bold):

"6 feet tall"
"3 meters deep"
"5 years old"
"2 minutes late"

It's exactly adjectives such as these that I am looking for...

Up to now, I was able to come up with the following (surprisingly short) list of adjectives:

tall
wide
long (both time and space)
deep
thick
old
high
strong (e.g. The crowd was 1000 people strong)
sharp/flat (e.g. Your DO is 20 hertz sharp)
fast/slow (for time, e.g. Your watch is 3 minutes fast/slow)
late
early

as well as some really interesting non-standard uses of adjectives:
short (money, e.g. Can you lend me some money? I am 3 dollars short)


and some other questionable ones:
open - as in the door is 20 degrees open, 20 cm open

But i was wondering if you could think of any adjectives that i may have missed...


A few qualifications:

1. I am not looking for adjectives that allow percents,
e.g. 30% full, 100% sure, 90% ready, etc.

2. It is very important that the adjectives not appear in the comparative form because then all adjectives license MPs, for example:
20 cm shorter, 20 degrees hotter, 3 pounds heavier, 10 points more intelligent, etc.

3. Likewise, for the same reason, the adjectives should not appear before an excessive "too"
20 cm too short, 20 degrees too hot, 3 pounds too heavy...

4. Also make sure that it's an adjective and not a preposition (e.g. 10 meters under/behind, 10 minutes before/after)

5. There are no right or wrong answers... (I've met people who consider "100 degrees hot" to be ok...) - just use your judgments as native English speakers

6. Make sure you can embed the "MP adjective" construction in a sentence, otherwise your judgment may be skewed.

Any contributions (even of strange combinations like Leonard Cohen's "1000 kisses deep") will be helpful! :-)

Thank you!!

This would actually make a good thread.

3 sheets to the wind

2 cans short of a six-pack

1 meter apart

2 yards shy of the goal

8 miles high

3 men strong...

Sheesh, there's an abundance of these.

Do comparative forms count?

2 kilos lighter or heavier (there are many of these)

15 MPH above or over the speed limit

You already mentioned comparatives. Ooops. And I think I threw in a few prepositions, too. But I also think the topic is just barely tapped.

Thanks Beck123!
"shy" is one I left out, strong and high I listed...
The rest are either prepositions or comparatives...
Amazing that there are so few of these in English... I am trying to figure out why :-)
e.g. why you can't say I am 140 IQ points intelligent, or the oven is 300 degrees hot! :-)

3 rooms vacant
1 pound Sterling
4 parsecs distant (about 13 light-years)
1 man standing (maybe exclude participles?)
5 days off (or on) - adj or prep depending on context
9 stitches sewn
2 tablespoons even
6 megapixel digital (camera)

A Mile...(position in space)
ahead
beyond
back
aside
behind
up
down
below
left

A mile...(position in time)
back
down
made
behind
left

Just curious, micha, what semantical aspect are you investigating?

well, you can, sort of:
be careful, that water is boiling hot.
the water they dived in was freezing cold.
he has MENSA intelligence.

while this sort of thing is certainly measurable, there may be hyperbole involved in the event. : )

hmmm, tx, but I don't think any of these really work...

A 3 rooms vacant hotel?

A 4 parsecs distant planet?

try saying any of these in a sentence (combine the adjective with a noun) and it seems really awkward!
but, thanks!

lol :-)
yes sorry, i meant actual explicit measuring units,
freezing and boiling below are just like "very"
and intelligence is a noun not adjective!
but thanks for creativity!
m y

thanks Jenny all of those you listed are prepositions really i think... the test is putting them in a full sentence such as:

The boy is 6 feet tall.

tall = adjective
6 feet is a measurement phrase.

and they felicitously combine! :-)

thanks for trying!

i'm interested to see if one can characterize all the adj. that to license measure phrases semantically. For example, perhaps they are all adjectives that measure only time and one-dimensional space, or an abstract comparative scale. (but no multi-dimensional scales for example! :-) )

best!

"The hotel has three rooms vacant."
"Kruger 60 is four parsecs distant."

Sounds good to me, but my ear may be off.

The boy is 6 feet tall.

One can also say: The boy is 6 foot tall.

nahh. your ear can't be off. that's what linguistics is about :-)

however:
for
1. "The hotel has three rooms vacant."
the structure of the sentence is different than may appear...
three rooms is not modifying vacant... or measuring vacancy... the actual structure is something like
"The hotel has three rooms [that are] vacant."


2. "Kruger 60 is four parsecs distant."
this may be ok, but i suspect it's an effect of scientific jargon and not natural language... does the following work equally well for you?
"The Empire State Building is 4 blocks distant"

?
tx!

well, I think there is some room for inexplicitness in your categorizations! freezing and boiling are very definite lower and upper bounds, respectively, on the temperature scale.

and, although I admit to stretching this point, I meant to say "he is MENSA intelligent", which is another bounded measure, by MENSA definition!

i hear you. i think that while freezing and boiling may indeed define an actual measurement, here they serve as a description of "cold/hot" respectively, and not a measurement of them...
to me they don't seem to be answering e.g. "what is the degree of their coldness?" but rather give a description (precise as it may be). i do concede unclarity. apologies.

One thousand nitpicks deep.

At 04:37 PM sharp.