Many a/help

Many a/help
Message from passenger75 posted on 31-12-2013 at 19:02:33 (D | E | F)
Hello all,

I was rambling in my dictionary and I saw this index: many a.
There were also these indexes: many an/many another.
And this was the definition: each of a large indefinite number.
And these are the examples:
▪ many a man
▪ many another day will come
Would you please explain these to me?What do the words mean? And what do the examples mean?
Thank you in advance.

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Edited by passenger75 on 31-12-2013 19:04

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Edited by lucile83 on 01-01-2014 08:53

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Re: Many a/help from carr30, posted on 01-01-2014 at 13:15:42 (D | E)
Hello

'Many a man' is a rather old-fashioned or poetic way of saying 'Many men', or 'many certain types of man'.

It is usually followed by 'would' and some sort of proposition e.g. 'Many a man would avoid that risk'.

'Many an' is the same but precedes a noun beginning with a vowel, e.g. 'Many an animal would have died eating that'

'Many another day will come' is again poetical and very rare. It means that there will be other days like this one and will usually be followed by 'when' and a prediction.

e.g. 'Many another day will come when people are unhappy.' i.e. 'There will be more days when people are unhappy'.

'Many another day' could also be expressed as 'Many other days'



'Many a' is rarely used in normal conversation. On many an occasion now, people would just say 'many'.

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Re: Many a/help from passenger75, posted on 01-01-2014 at 13:33:31 (D | E)
What a precise explanation,thank you,I got the answer.

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