italki - 'Many progeny' - is it a mistake? This is the sentence from 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers. “Victor,” B

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Ksenia

'Many progeny' - is it a mistake? This is the sentence from 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers. “Victor,” Bailey said, “as you might be able to see, is carrying our most delicate cargo, the seahorse, and of course his many progeny. According to dictionaries, 'progeny' is an uncountable noun, so it should be used 'much' as a determiner, right? But even 'much progeny' sounds a bit odd (at least for me)... Would not it be better to use an adjective? For example, 'numerous' or 'multitudinous'... Will it be sound better? Thank you for your help :)

2017年4月30日 10:50

回答 · 3

"Progeny" is a very unusual noun in terms of its categorisation. It's not an uncountable noun but most often a countable plural noun. See: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/progeny Although it is used mostly to refer to more than one child, if a person or animal has only one child, then progeny can still be used to refer to that single child. So in practice, "progeny" means all the members of the set of children of a particular parent or parents, even if there is only one member of the set.

2017年4月30日

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