Disreputable, Unloved, Invaluable Adjectives

Working writers, aspiring writers, and struggling writers have often encountered the hint, sometimes even phrased as a rule, "Eliminate adjectives." Usually Hemingway is invoked just before or after that is propounded.

Since the first word of this blog entry served as its first adjective, you might already have grasped that I don't take that hint to heart.

But don't listen to me. I'll invoke a higher authority: Roald Dahl. "He had a fine white mustache and bushy white eyebrows and a wrinkly pink face." That is how Dahl describes the title character in his short story, "The Umbrella Man."

That sentence breaks at least three of the rules associated with the authoritative manuals. It uses a weak predicate (the verb is a form of "to have," which is almost as bad as "to be"!) It says something in a lot of words that it might have said in fewer ("he was old but still healthy" might do it for a minimalist). And it is full of fine white bushy adjectives.

Nonetheless, it is a very fine sentence. It works, first, because it is balanced, with three nouns each bearing two adjectives. Second, those adjectives are such as to encourage thought.

Consider the first of them: "fine." Notice that it has three pertinent meanings. It can mean "excellent example" as it meant in the phrase "a very fine sentence" at the start of the preceding paragraph. Or it can mean "slender" as in "fine hair" (probably the predominant meaning here.) Or it can mean "subtle" as in "there is a fine distinction involved."

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