... they decided to hire the tall and strong John.

[navi tasan]

Instead of hiring Hank or Joe, they decided to hire the tall and strong John.

Is that sentence correct if the intended meaning is that instead of hiring Hank or Joe, they decided to hire John, who was tall and strong?

 

[Annabel Lee]

Instead of hiring Hank or Joe, they decided to hire the tall and strong John.

Is that sentence correct if the intended meaning is that instead of hiring Hank or Joe, they decided to hire John, who was tall and strong?

Yes, that "the tall and strong John" can be understood that way; and on that reading, the adjectives "tall" and "strong" function as coordinated epithets rather than as restrictive modifiers differentiating one John from other Johns. It's the same type of phenomenon we find in phrases like "the wise Athena," "the almighty God," "the ingenious Einstein," "The Great Gatsby," etc.

 

[5jj]

Instead of hiring Hank or Joe, they decided to hire John, who was tall and strong?

That sentence is far more natural than the one you asked about.

 

[5jj]

we find in phrases like "the wise Athena," "the almighty God," "the ingenious Einstein," "The Great Gatsby," etc.

I found coordinated adjectives in Acts 4:20: "The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.”

However, I find the use of the coordinated adjectives denoting such mundane qualities as tall and strong before a nobody very unnatural.

 

[Annabel Lee]

I found coordinated adjectives in Acts 4:20: "The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.”

However, I find the use of the coordinated adjectives denoting such mundane qualities as tall and strong before a nobody very unnatural.

I see what you mean about "mundane qualities." Maybe, however, for those in John's sphere of orbit, his tallness and strength are celebrated, distinguishing qualities of his. Can we say that tallness and strength are necessarily non-standout, mundane qualities in every context? Here's an example with coordinated epithets that is less than several hundred years old:

• "After the war, the ever-critical and outspoken Nina Gourfinkel attacked the Committee of Nimes, which, in her opinion, 'normalized the nightmare' of the camps and played Vichy's game." (source, 2019)

 

[5jj]

Nina Gourfnkel was hardly a nobody and ever-critical and outspoken are not the most mundane of qualities.

 

[SoothingDave]

Maybe the job is a firefighter, where those qualities are important.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Nina Gourfnkel was hardly a nobody . . .

Ironically, Jay Gatsby of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was a nobody (as was the "wizard" in Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). Perhaps a person's being a nobody or a somebody occasionally depends, independently of grammar, on the perceiver's point of view and background knowledge about that person. A quote from Chapter 7 of Gatsby:

"They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.​

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'He isn't causing a row,' Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. 'You're causing a row. Please have a little self-control.'​

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'Self-control!' repeated Tom incredulously. 'I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out. . . ."​

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- F. Scott Fitzgerald​