![]() So: "He thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as that they should have the malady in less attractive forms."įinally, Dickens simply omits the subject and auxiliary verb from the second subordinate clause: "He thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. Of course, Dickens is talking about "them", not "us": "It would be quite as well that they should walk, as that they should drive."ĭickens also phrases it as a thought that Scrooge is having: " He thought it quite as well that they should walk, as that they should drive."Īnd, of course, the verbs that Dickens uses are not "walk" and "drive", but "wrinkle up their eyes in grins" and "have the malady in less attractive forms". It's still the same if we replace the infinitive verbs with subordinate clauses: "It would be quite as well that we should walk, as that we should drive." Now I'll transform this sentence, step by step, into Dickens' sentence.įirst, he meaning stays the same if we change "just as good" to "quite as well": "It would be quite as well to walk as to drive." Here's a modern English sentence that uses essentially the same construct: "It would be just as good to walk as to drive." In other words, walking would be as good as driving. Could someone explain the meaning of this sentence and the grammar used here? Thanks!Įdit: I think I'm starting to grasp the meaning now, but I still don't get the grammar.why can "as" mean "rather than"? Is this usage of "as well-as" explained in dictionaries? My guess is that it means something like "he thought it just as well that they wrinkle up their eyes in grins, rather than making their faces look uglier", but I might be wrong. I can't quite figure out the "quite as well that - as have-" part. His own heart laughed: and that was quite That they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in That such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well People did not have their fill of laughter in the outset and knowing That nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some Let them laugh, and little heeded them for he was wise enough to know Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he Good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good oldĬity knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good He did it all, and infinitely more Īnd to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. The 1980s all-girl band, the Bangles, reunites for a comeback album with crisp Beatles-esque melodies.I am reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and finally reached the last few pages, but I am stuck with the following paragraph.Now, more than 300 years later, Walt Disney lias spun the idea into a whoop-dee-doo of comic characters, a spatterdash of Technicolor and a u-dee-dah of nostalgic melodies. ![]()
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