[Vocabulary] Fool that I am.

[GoldfishLord]

Fool that I am.

What's the meaning of `that`?
And is the word `Fool` a noun?



P.S. I really love English

 

[charliedeut]

And is the word `Fool` a noun?

Welcome to the Forum, Goldfish,

A look at any dictionary would have told you that. See, for instance: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fool

Please bookmark http://onelook.com/browse.shtml for future reference.

 

[emsr2d2]

To be fair, "fool" is both a noun and a verb. The unusual (but correct) construction of the original sentence probably didn't help the OP decide which one was being used.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


Great question, Goldfish.

I have found some information that may interest you and other learners.

1. "Fool that he was, he managed to evade [escape] his pursuers [people chasing him]."

a. According to four scholars, that is a very elegant way to say, "Even though he was a fool, he managed to evade his pursuers."

2. Another scholar gives this sentence: "Idiot that I am, I forgot the tickets!"

a. The scholar says that this word order is "sometimes used in clauses of cause."

He does not tell us what that sentence means, but I have read that in such sentences, the relative pronoun "that" is being used as a conjunction. Something like the word "as (because)":

So that sentence probably means something like: "As I am (an) idiot, I forgot the tickets."


Credit: Those four scholars (Quirk and three others) wrote A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985 edition), pages 1098 and 1107; the other scholar is Paul Roberts in his Understanding English (1954), page 328.

 

[GoldfishLord]

This is very useful reply. but I couldn't find this information in dictionaries. why is there no information for this in dictionaries?

 

[emsr2d2]

Dictionaries are designed only to give the definition of a word (or definitions), and to tell you whether they are a noun, verb, adjective etc. It is impossible for dictionaries to give every example of the use of a word or a phrase. For that, you need a good grammar book (preferably more than one) and possibly a teacher of conversational English.