Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 November 23
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November 23
editOne too many loan
editI came across this in a book I'm reading:
- Perhaps Hunt ... had asked Dickens for one too many loan, ...
It seemed a typo for the more idiomatic "one too many loans", until I reflected that if it had been "one loan too many", that would have been fine. So, does this variation in word order really alter the grammar? What is the subject's number, and why? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:55, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
- As to why, I suggest that "one" is singular for obvious reasons, while "one too many" refers to all the loans and is therefore plural. --174.89.144.126 (talk) 06:35, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
- I can't accept your reasoning.
- What I'm thinking is that when "one" and "loan" are separated by "too many", the temptation is to treat it as (one) + (too many loans). But no such issue arises with "one loan too many". I'd say the writer is pedantically correct, since "one loan" is always singular, but what he wrote is as unidiomatic as "It is I" in answer to "Who's there". -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 10:37, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
- To my ear, "one too many loan" is slightly more idiomatic than the alternative. At a guess, this has more to do with the "too (adjective) a (singular)" construction than anything else, even though the indefinite article isn't actually present here. FWIW.
- - 2A02:560:5979:5700:3813:105:78B:8250 (talk) 12:02, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
- On further thought, there're several more constructions that may be contributing, like "many a ..." and "too much of a ...". In any case, I'm fairly confident that "one too many a loan" wouldn't give me pause, notwithstanding the fact that I'm not quite confident that it's really well-formed, once I do pause to consider it.
- As for the original question, my current conclusion is that it's not that the singular is more or less grammatical than the plural, but that there's a subtle distinction in meaning, and that one simply ought to use whichever one applies more closely. There're n+1 things, n of which being, in whatever sense, good, and 1 being bad. The plural refers to the lot, the singular only to whichever is extraneous. Of course, if the things don't have an intrinsic and intuitive ordering, that distinction may well be the proverbial one without a difference. In the case at hand, the ordering is obvious, though - asking for loans constitutes a chronological sequence of events, of which the last one is bound to be the "one too many".
- For the record, that general idea - that neither variant is better than the other, but rather that they capture different facets of the matter - is the one I arrive at more often than not in situations like this, heh.
- - 2A02:560:5979:5700:3813:105:78B:8250 (talk) 14:56, 24 November 2022 (UTC)