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I have stumbled onto two sentences in my book and I wonder to know why there is missing "his" before "tears" and "a cople of feet". The texts are

Then, as he tried to drop a couple of feet to the ground, he caught his shirt on a metal shard that hang him up for an instant before tearing loose.

Chad fought tears as he leaned in and pressed his head against his father's chest.

For me it would be OK to say "his tears" and "his couple of feet", because it was his tears and his feet, as well as it was his shirt and his head, but I think it was reason for writer not to write that. Can you explain to me why?

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In the first sentence, it is not referring to his feet. It is referring to feet as distance. He is dropping to the ground from a height of a couple of feet. So his doesn't make sense here. If it was reffering to his feet then "...tried to drop his feet to the ground..." would be correct.

For the second sentence, we tend not to refer to someone as owning tears. You could say fought his tears but it sounds strange. You would say, for example, "a tear rolled down his cheek". It is obvious whose tear it is without saying it explicitly.

(Sidenote "fought back tears" is more common than "fought tears". See ngram: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fought+tears%2C+fought+back+tears&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfought%20tears%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cfought%20back%20tears%3B%2Cc0)

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The words "couple of feet" refer not to his feet, but to a distance of two feet, or 24 inches (61 centimeters), so "his" doesn't belong there.

You could say "he fought his tears", but it's unnecessary, since it's understood that his own tears are referred to. He can't fight someone else's tears.

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  • If the OP is unfamiliar with a "foot" as a unit of distance, they're also likely to unfamiliar with an "inch". A foot is about 30 centimeters.
    – Canadian Yankee
    Nov 4, 2020 at 13:38
  • @CanadianYankee Good thought. Clarification added to answer.
    – Jack O'Flaherty
    Nov 4, 2020 at 17:23
  • Good clarification, although I think you've been over-precise. The phrase "a couple of feet" is deliberately imprecise, so a metric equivalent would be something like "about half a meter".
    – Canadian Yankee
    Nov 4, 2020 at 17:57
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    Now you're being over-precise about imprecision.
    – Jack O'Flaherty
    Nov 4, 2020 at 18:30

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