sweetnpetite
Intellectual snob
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2003
- Posts
- 9,135
Somewhere along the line, phrases like "that was so much fun" or "that was such fun" started to be replaced by "that was so fun." Somehow the "fun" has shifted from being a noun to being an adjective, and an adjective that has scale or degrees at that. What's going on? Is this a borrowing from another language's idiom or what?
It doesn't seem to be a borrowing, just a shift from noun to adjective that is common in English. This one, however, tends to bother people more than others.
It's not always easy, or even possible, to tell the difference between a noun and an adjective; the grammar of English doesn't always correspond with the "noun" and "adjective" labels. Nouns can be used attributively (that is, before and directly modifying another noun) and you can't tell them from adjectives based on position alone. Take television in "a television screen." We "know" this is a noun, because "television" is a noun, even though it modifies "screen" the same way any adjective would--it describes the type of screen. In a similar way, mass nouns can be used predicatively (that is, after a linking verb), where you can often find an adjective. Thus, "It was love at first sight." Here "love" remains a noun, even though the sentence structure seems to parallel "It was beautiful in the moonlight." In other words, predicate nouns and predicate adjectives, attributive nouns and attributive adjectives, are equally at home in English.
There are assorted early examples of "fun" in attributive or predicate positions where it could be considered adjectival. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a title from 1853: "Fun Jottings; or, Laughs I have taken pen to." In Tom Sawyer (1876), Mark Twain writes "Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun or earnest?" where fun seems clearly to be an adjective, since it's paired with the adjective "earnest."
There are assorted other early attributive examples where "fun" could be considered an adjective (but is probably a noun), such as "fun fair" (a fair where there is amusement, not an enjoyable fair) or "funfest," but there are also even more ambiguous examples. By around 1950, though, fun was increasingly used as a normal adjective that could be compared (more fun, most fun, funner, funnest) or used with adverbs ("really fun"). In current use especially among younger speakers such expressions as "so fun," "really fun," "more fun," and the like, in attributive or predicative positions, are perfectly standard and unremarkable. Funner and funnest are still regarded as informal or jocular. Some speakers find any adjectival use of fun irritating ("it makes my skin crawl," commented a colleague of mine; "it doesn't sound natural," commented a parent of mine) and usage guides often recommend considering any adjectival fun informal. I myself feel that funner and funnest are informal, but that all other adjectival uses are acceptable. I would, however, recommend being cautious about adjectival fun in formal circumstances, since many people do object to it.
I should also point out that the noun fun itself has been criticized in the past. Johnson, in his 1755 dictionary, described it as "a low cant word," and if use of the noun can become standard there's no reason the adjective can't as well.
The word fun is first found in the late seventeenth century, and appears to be a variant of the obsolete verb fon 'to make a fool of'.
It doesn't seem to be a borrowing, just a shift from noun to adjective that is common in English. This one, however, tends to bother people more than others.
It's not always easy, or even possible, to tell the difference between a noun and an adjective; the grammar of English doesn't always correspond with the "noun" and "adjective" labels. Nouns can be used attributively (that is, before and directly modifying another noun) and you can't tell them from adjectives based on position alone. Take television in "a television screen." We "know" this is a noun, because "television" is a noun, even though it modifies "screen" the same way any adjective would--it describes the type of screen. In a similar way, mass nouns can be used predicatively (that is, after a linking verb), where you can often find an adjective. Thus, "It was love at first sight." Here "love" remains a noun, even though the sentence structure seems to parallel "It was beautiful in the moonlight." In other words, predicate nouns and predicate adjectives, attributive nouns and attributive adjectives, are equally at home in English.
There are assorted early examples of "fun" in attributive or predicate positions where it could be considered adjectival. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a title from 1853: "Fun Jottings; or, Laughs I have taken pen to." In Tom Sawyer (1876), Mark Twain writes "Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun or earnest?" where fun seems clearly to be an adjective, since it's paired with the adjective "earnest."
There are assorted other early attributive examples where "fun" could be considered an adjective (but is probably a noun), such as "fun fair" (a fair where there is amusement, not an enjoyable fair) or "funfest," but there are also even more ambiguous examples. By around 1950, though, fun was increasingly used as a normal adjective that could be compared (more fun, most fun, funner, funnest) or used with adverbs ("really fun"). In current use especially among younger speakers such expressions as "so fun," "really fun," "more fun," and the like, in attributive or predicative positions, are perfectly standard and unremarkable. Funner and funnest are still regarded as informal or jocular. Some speakers find any adjectival use of fun irritating ("it makes my skin crawl," commented a colleague of mine; "it doesn't sound natural," commented a parent of mine) and usage guides often recommend considering any adjectival fun informal. I myself feel that funner and funnest are informal, but that all other adjectival uses are acceptable. I would, however, recommend being cautious about adjectival fun in formal circumstances, since many people do object to it.
I should also point out that the noun fun itself has been criticized in the past. Johnson, in his 1755 dictionary, described it as "a low cant word," and if use of the noun can become standard there's no reason the adjective can't as well.
The word fun is first found in the late seventeenth century, and appears to be a variant of the obsolete verb fon 'to make a fool of'.
