too entirely horrible

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Mher

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Hi, dear English-speaking friends. Could you express the meaning of "too entirely horrible" in a different way? Could I rewrite it as "extremely or completely horrible"? Are they the same? The sentence is as follows:

"There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the
purposes of legitimate fiction." (http://poestories.com/read/premature)
 

Tdol

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You could say too horrible or too utterly horrible.
 
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I see two concepts in this context.

The first is that the 'horrible' is 'too entirely'.

The second is that something before is also entirely horrible and the sentence is just saying that this is also entirely horrible.

But I would go with the first concept since there is no comma after the 'too'. I'm not going to throw the second concept away though, it's still possible.


"There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are extremely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction."



"There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are completely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction."

It would be the same meaning for the first concept.


"There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing; but which are too, extremely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction."
"There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing; but which are too, completely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction."

It would be different compared to the second concept.



***Not a teacher***
 
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Charlie Bernstein

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If you want to say it differently, you can't keep the word horrible. There are plenty of other words you can use - infamous, odious, disgusting, foul, terrible, dispicable....
 
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