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I would sooner eat dog...

Posted by Smokey Stover on February 14, 2008 at 05:25:

In Reply to: I would sooner eat dog... posted by A Devlin on February 13, 2008 at 18:16:

: Do phrases come under certain grammar categories such as "I would sooner eat dog sick than play football" in other words you would rather do something really disgusting than something thats not too bad. We would like to know if the above type of phrase has a name?

As far as I know, it's just a comparative expression, like "Some men would rather eat pizza than have sex." It may not obviously be a comparison, but "than" is used as it is in other comparisons. And it CAN be considered a comparison. Which would you rather do? Compared to playing football I'd rather eat dog-sick. (Is there really such a word as dog-sick?) It's quite possible that various technical terms are applied to the elements in the expression by linguists and grammarians, but as far as I know none are considered useful for ordinary purposes in the construction or analysis of sentences of this type. However, mine is a simplistic approach that you many not find useful.
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