Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 February 22

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February 22

Strange sentence

Here a BBC author writes: "This speech was Putin the angry, impatient and directly threatening". While I do understand it (could be paraphrased as "In this speech Putin was angry, impatient and directly threatening"), the word order looks odd. Is this some kind of literary language? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 13:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I think the author is using epithets: "Putin the angry", "Putin the impatient" etc., perhaps in allusion to Ivan the Terrible and similar. --T*U (talk) 14:46, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No. It's standard English, but you have misinterpreted it. The sentence describes how the speech's content and delivery demonstrated traits of Putin's personality; it is not about how Putin was feeling. It could be (clumsily) recast as "This speech showed Putin-the-angry, Putin-the-impatient, and Putin-the-directly-threatening.". Bazza (talk) 14:51, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

See also article apposition... AnonMoos (talk) 17:53, 22 February 2022 (UTC)