Foolish answer

Posted by Lotg on August 24, 2003

In Reply to: Foolish answer posted by Henry on August 23, 2003

: : 'He is less of a fool than I thought he was.'
: : and 'It might be less of a problem ethically'

: : How to explain 'less of'?

: : I've never seen this kind of grammatical rule.

: It's a comparative. It means smaller in size or degree. You could also say 'It might not be such a big problem ethically' or 'It might be a smaller problem ethically.'
: The first phrase has an added complication. You could also say 'He is not as big a fool as I thought he was.' However, in English you can have a bigger fool but not a smaller fool! Although grammatically correct, it would not be idiomatic to say 'He is a smaller fool than I thought he was.'

::: Wow, now I'm intrigued to know how you can have one without the other. The concept that we can have bigger fools but not smaller fools I don't understand. If you can have a degree of foolishness, how can it only be one way? This is a genuine query, I have no pre-conceived ideas about this, I'm just fascinated at the possibility.