Definition:
A construction that lacks a verb but functions as a sentence. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- No comment.
- "Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels."
(The Doctor in "Blink," Doctor Who, 2007) - "Waiter! raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye--nothing like raw beefsteak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient."
(Alfred Jingle in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, 1837) - No problem.
- "It better as a verbless sentence seems to have won a place in correct, if informal, speech. 'I sure hope the market improves.' 'It better.' In fact, it had better might seem excessively formal in such an exchange."
(E. D. Johnson, The Handbook of Good English. Simon & Schuster, 1991) - "A grammarian might say that a verbless sentence was a contradiction in terms; but, for the purpose of this article, the definition of a sentence is that which the OED calls 'in popular use often, such a portion of a composition or utterance as extends from one full stop to another.'
"The verbless sentence is a device for enlivening the written word by approximating it to the spoken. There is nothing new about it. Tacitus, for one, was much given to it. What is new is its vogue with English journalists and other writers . . ..
"Since the verbless sentence is freely employed by some good writers (as well as extravagantly by many less good ones) it must be classed as modern English usage. That grammarians might deny it the right to be called a sentence has nothing to do with its merits. It must be judged by its success in affecting the reader in the way the writer intended. Used sparingly and with discrimination, the device can no doubt be an effective medium of emphasis, intimacy, and rhetoric."
(H.W. Fowler and Ernest Gowers, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd ed. Oxford Univ. Press, 1965)
Also Known As: jinglese, broken sentence,
