Thursday, September 17, 2015

grammar - Why is “deal 6 damage” a legit phrase?


Hearthstone Fireball Card


I mean, if damage is countable, it should be



Deal 6 damages.




If it’s not countable, then this sentence should be wrong.


Such as saying something like



I drank 5 water.



So... am I missing something here?



Answer



It's domain specific, and not something that would be said outside the context of a game like this.


It's almost certainly an elided form of the following:




Deal 6 points of damage.



(And damage here is a mass noun.)


In the same way that headlines take liberties with the omission of articles and other grammatical structures, so too is this game using a shortened form of English that's understood in its own context. (With that font size, it looks like the full sentence might not fit within the space allowed by the card.)


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