Friday December 9, 2005
She is six feet (not foot) tall
I BEG to differ with Fadzilah Amin’s explanation regarding “six foot tall” (Dec 2). In my opinion, it should have been “We saw a woman at the shop. She is six feet tall” rather than “... She is six foot tall.”
“Foot” is used when it is used in front of a noun and attached with a number by a dash. Thus we have:
He is a five-foot-tall man.
It is a six-foot stick.
It is a twelve-foot boat.
However, “foot” becomes “feet” in the following:
The man is five feet tall.
The stick is six feet long.
The boat is twelve feet long.
The ship is fifty feet wide.
Mount Kinabalu is 13,000 feet high.
Therefore, the basic rule would be: “? feet tall/wide/long/high”
The same goes with the word “year”:
She is a five-year-old girl.
She is five years old.
We definitely do not say “She is five year old” whose ungrammatical construction is similar to Fadzilah’s “She is six foot tall.” – Mahid bin Masseluang, Labuan
Straight, straighter, straightest
POLA Singh has a point which is straight – that one road can be straight and another road not straight; that one road cannot be straighter than the other (Nov 25).
In other words, the word “straight” has no two ways about it – the word is non-gradable. Fadzilah Amin has, however, pointed otherwise.
Both Pola Singh and Fadzilah are right. I checked the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1997) and was amused to learn that there are 14 (fourteen) entries for the word “straight”, of which FIVE – in the senses of PLAIN, CLEAR, FOLLOWING EACH OTHER, SEXUALITY, and NOT OWING MONEY– are not gradable. – Dr Lim Chin Lam, Penang
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