Saturday, May 19, 2012

grammar - "It was an awesome weather." Is this sentence correct?




Could someone help me with this sentence:
"It was an awesome weather."



Is this sentence correct?


Answer



One wouldn't say It was an awesome weather but we had awesome weather or the weather was awesome. Another choice is it was awesome weather, especially as an answer to what kind of weather was it?




Weather is almost always a mass (or uncountable) noun. See, among others, Oxford dictionary.



An exception to this is in (in) all weathers, but this is now rare and could be considered a 'fixed expression'. In Moby Dick you'll find




It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides.




In 1998 a book called The Ocean: Our Future includes





Here, at all times of day and in all weathers, the sea and the maritime environment are a constant, pervasive and complex presence.




Today, most speakers do not use weather as a count noun, but usage determines what is grammatical; so stay tuned. Some people in the US these days use weather to mean an individual, particular instance of bad weather, as in We're going to have some weather tonight and Did you get any weather over there last night?, which is a usage that is kind of new to me. Still, this is uncountable, even though it refers to a single event.


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