More than one game was lost.
The singular form confused me.
Does "more than one" here indicate plural or "more than" itself emphasis some quality?
How should I parse this sentence to make sense?
-
I'm not sure it's logic as much as convention, to match the verb to the noun in the idiomatic expression. Note you can also say, More than a few games were lost.– AndrewMar 20, 2018 at 6:07
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Start with the simple case:
One game was lost.
This conforms to standard usage, singular game, singular was.
Now we want to say that not only a single game was lost, a likely context being that we are evaluating the success of a team, or a coach.
Losing one game might be bad luck, but more than one game was lost, this is not good.
We are treating more than as a modifier of the original one game was lost.
