"So big a house"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jun 9, 2007, at 4:37 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> In what context would such a phrase occur?
>
> "I don't know the address, but it's so big a house that you can't
> miss it."
>
> "it's so big a house that it dwarfs every other house around it for
> blocks."
>
> Something along those lines?
>
> I'm not (consciously?) aware of the existence of this sort of
> expression. Weird.

remember that it's not just "so", but a bunch of other degree
modifiers as well.

but your suggested examples are fine.

googling on "so big a" gets you over 70,000 hits (and that's just for
the adjective "big"), many of them relevant:

   Why so big a story?

   Not so big a deal.

   So big a deviation from the regression line of the human newborn
size "suggests an ..."

   ... a picture that made so big a success in this city and so big a
failure in the rest of the country.

   ... it's not so big a stretch as you may think.

   ... true stardom is not so big a leap.

   [opera review]  ... sounded underpowered for so big a part in so
big a house.

and on and on.

over a million raw hits each for "too big a", "as big a", and "how
big a".  over 700k for "that big a".

arnold

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