Fail as an adjective

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Did anybody mention dialectal "You are funnin' me"?
------Original Message------
From: Arnold Zwicky
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Fail as an adjective
Sent: Jul 10, 2009 10:25 AM

On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:01 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
>
> At 7/10/2009 05:12 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>> Or is it that 'so' has become an all-purpose intensifier that goes
>> with
>> nouns as well as adjectives?
>
> Like "It was so fun."

not really.

we've covered the case of "fun" here several times in the past.  the
summary is that alongside the noun "fun" an adjective "fun" has
developed for many speakers (to the grave dismay of many commenters).
(in previous discussion, we looked at possible routes to this
development.)

we then get the adjective "fun" with the full range of degree
modifiers (e.g., "very fun"), and some speakers have an inflectional
comparative ("funner") and superlative ("funnest"). (the noun "fun"
continues in use, as in "it was a lot of fun".)

arnold

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