monstrous

[Victor Steinbok]

The only one that I see with some regularity is "monstrous good time",
usually, as I said earlier, in theater reviews. It makes for a nice
quotable extract to be spliced into an ad. The rest are sporadic, but exist.

Most of the examples would be subject to reanalisys--is it [[monstrous
Aj] N] or [monstrous [NP]] or maybe even serial [monstrous, Aj N]. Only
the first of these qualifies. Of course, prescriptively, it would be
"monstrously". But there is an exception even among the OED examples:

 >  1993 E. Bloom & L. Bloom Piozzi Lett. 401A Colewart so monstrous
huge that five hundred men on horseback might stand in her shade.

If it had a comma, it would just be an example of 5.a. But it doesn't.

     VS-)

On 4/20/2011 10:47 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Maybe it's just me, but I've never heard a living human - on or off the
> screen - use "monstrous" as an adv.
>
> It's soooo lower-class 19th C.
>
> HDAS, going way out on the limb of inclusiveness, has a single cite of
> "monstrous" meaning "remarkable; 'immense'" : "Great. Monstrous. Really
> talented cat."
>
> The year was 1968 - when it was still hip to call dudes "cats."
>
> JL

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