do not understand the word /use of 'worth'

[user123]

I am a competent user of English. worth has always perplexed me. It is an adjective, like say 'red'.
One does not say however "you are not red it" or "what is your red?"

in my native language to my knowledge, all adjectives behave the same.

is there another word used similarly to worth?

 

[Barque]

in my native language to my knowledge, all adjectives behave the same.

English isn't Greek.

And in English, words don't always work the same way even if they are the same part of speech.

Also, "worth" isn't always an adjective.

is there another word used similarly to worth?

I can't think of one offhand but there could be.

 

[Barque]

I am a competent user of English.

If so, you should know that a basic rule is that sentences always start with a capital letter. You ignored that rule three times.

 

[emsr2d2]

I am a competent user of English. The word "worth" has always perplexed me. It is an adjective, like, say for example/instance, 'red'.
One does not say, however, "You are not red it" or "What is your red?"

In my native language (to my knowledge), all adjectives behave the same.

Is there another word used similarly to "worth"?

The ability to use one adjective in a sentence doesn't lead to the ability to use any other adjective in the same sentence. That's what you tried to do by replacing "worth" with "red". Are you really saying that in Greek any adjective fits in any sentence that contains an adjective?

 

[user123]

"I feel my question is still unanswered."

Note from mod: I have edited the drivel out of your post. Your question will remain unanswered unless and until you respect the rules of our forum. We require proper capitalization and punctuation.

Moderator

 

[user123]

Note from mod: I have edited the drivel out of your post. Your question will remain unanswered unless and until you respect the rules of our forum. We require proper capitalization and punctuation.

I used proper punctuation, and capitalization (in this current post). Can I have a proper answer now?

 

[probus]

In many contexts worth is not an adjective but a noun. For example we might speak of a person's net worth. As a noun, worth is rather synonymous with value: John was a pious man and gave his church a statue of great worth. The adjectival equivalent might be: The statue John gave to his church was worth a lot. I cannot think of a single-word synonym for the adjectival worth. I'd have to resort to phrases such as "valued at" or "priced at".

 

[Tarheel]

"You're worth it!" means somebody deserves something.

 

[Holmes]

I am a competent user of English. worth has always perplexed me. It is an adjective, like say 'red'.
One does not say however "you are not red it" or "what is your red?"

in my native language to my knowledge, all adjectives behave the same.

The lexico-syntactic status of worth has been controversial among linguists. In the major 1985 comprehensive English grammar (Quirk et al.'s A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language), worth was analyzed as a preposition (and, yes, also a noun); but in the major 2002 comprehensive English grammar (Huddleston and Pullum's The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language), worth was analyzed as an adjective (and, yes, also a noun).

Quirk et al.'s argument for worth being a preposition is that "it can govern a noun phrase [San Francisco is worth frequent visits], a nominal -ing clause with a genitive subject [San Francisco is worth your visiting frequently], and a nominal relative clause [The bicycle is not worth what you paid for it] (but not a that-clause or a to-infinitive clause" (note [c], p. 1064).

Huddleston and Pullum's argument for worth being an adjective is that it can occur as a complement to the linking verb become ("What might have been a $200 first edition suddenly became [worth perhaps 10 times that amount]" (p. 607) and that it needs an implied subject when it appears in the position of an introductory prepositional phrase. They give the following two examples (p. 607). The asterisk before the second one shows that they deem it ungrammatical:

[Worth over a million dollars,] the jewels were kept under surveillance by a veritable army of security guards.
*[Worth over a million dollars,] there'll be ample opportunity for a lavish lifestyle.

is there another word used similarly to worth?

Yes. According to Huddleston and Pullum, there are precisely three other words like it—the adjectives due, like, and unlike—each of which accepts a noun-phrase complement. I would note that none of those other three words is quite as special as worth. Sentences containing predicates with worth + -ing-clause complements can have as their subject the direct object of the -ing-clause complement. This is not true of the other words on their list.

The unexamined life is not worth living _.
*The unexamined life is not like living _.
*The unexamined life is not due living _.

I personally think that the adjective unbecoming (as in It was conduct [unbecoming an officer]) belongs in the group that Huddleston and Pullum has given.