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Consider the self-made sentence below

They assessed the durability for the both a hot weather and cold.

Is both a hot weather and cold correct?

I don't know if I can omit the indefinite article as above.

I didn't notice that I was using an unidiomatic collocation for "a + adjective + uncountable noun" pattern, but as @Jason noticed it my point was something else. Thanks for correcting that issue anyways.

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    This sentence does not really make much sense. A corrected sentence would be "They assessed the durability for both hot and cold weather" OR "The assessed the durability for both hot weather and cold weather" ... That being said I am not sure where that leaves your question – katatahito Jun 14 '19 at 2:31
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The specific sentence in the question doesn't really make sense—it shouldn't have an indefinite article in the first place. (The definite article should also not be there.)

A better version would be:

✔ They assessed its durability in both hot weather and cold.

Although the indefinite article no longer applies, the second instance of weather can be omitted.

Here is a different sentence of the same type that uses the indefinite article:

✔ They ate a meal both hot and cold.

The syntax allows for an indefinite article. But note that it doesn't follow the exact construction of the sentence in the question. (The indefinite article comes before both rather than after it.) It's referring to a single meal that is both hot and cold rather than to one meal that is hot and another meal that is cold.

Finally, here is a construction that is identical to the one in the question:

✔ They ate both a hot meal and a cold meal.
→ They ate both a hot meal and a cold meal.
→ They ate both a hot meal and cold.

I'm fairly sure that it's syntactically sound to omit the words that have been omitted. Since it's a parallel construction, the reader should be able to mentally replace them and understand the meaning.

However, these particular omissions seem a little awkward. At least stylistically, I suspect the omissions would not normally take place.

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  • Thank you Jason, I am really happy that you could understand my major concern about that question. So you think, a native writer would be more likely to use a different structure than doing that omissions, right? – Cardinal Jun 14 '19 at 20:28
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    @Cardinal Right. I think that in this specific case (the last construction in my answer), there would normally not be an omission. – Jason Bassford Jun 14 '19 at 21:02
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"Weather" is not a countable noun and so never takes an indefinite article.

So the proper phrasing is either

both hot and cold weather

or

both hot weather and cold weather

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  • Thanks for the answer, I know that I shouldn't use an indefinite article right before an uncountable noun. No doubt 100 percent, but the thing is the article here is before the adjective not the noun. That a hot weather is not an idiomatic collocation is something different IMHO. – Cardinal Jun 14 '19 at 20:44
  • The rules about articles and uncountable nouns are not affected by whether the noun is modified by an adjectve. But you may be making a more subtle point, namely that, In many respects, "hot weather" and "cold weather" are treated as a single two-word noun rather than as an adjective plus a noun. That is, they are considered different things rather than different aspects of the same thing. But even if that is so, both nouns are uncountable. – Jeff Morrow Jun 15 '19 at 4:06

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