Wednesday, July 20, 2016

"High quality" usage


According to http://www.phrasemix.com/phrases/something-is-of-high-quality ,



It is high quality.



or



It is of high quality.



are both OK, but clearly the first is ungrammatical. Is it really normal to say the first, or sounds a little bit odd and is used seldomly?




Answer




It is high quality.



There is nothing wrong with this. Quality is an adjective and high is an adverb modifying quality. Adjectives are OK after to be since to be is a copular verb and can take subject complements.



It is of high quality



It's also fine for a subject complement to be a prepositional phrase. The prepositional phrase's object is the sentence's subject.


So, what's the difference in meaning?



"X is high quality" - You are saying X has the attribute high quality. No implication, and this is best if the attribute high quality is inherent to X.


"X is of high quality" - You are implying X has the attribute high quality compared to those in group of other X's, or you are implying something used to make X has given X the attribute high quality.


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