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I'm having a discussion with someone. He is saying that since you can say 'the old', you can say 'the ignoble' and although I've never heard or seen it, I think he's right. He wants to say a person did something ignoble. So: 'He did the ignoble' which sounds off to me.

That doesn't seem right to me. He provided two quotes:

Becoming a baseball star is a noble dream, but to do that, some players did the ignoble, ingesting and injecting dangerous and often illegal substances.

Disney was in desperate need of new funds, so he swallowed his artistic pride and did the ignoble: he began to take for-hire assignments.

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  • Cambridge Dictionary has old as a noun.
    – Weather Vane
    Commented Apr 15, 2023 at 20:50
  • No, at least not with that meaning.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Apr 15, 2023 at 21:11
  • I think your friend is confusing the word unthinkable with ignoble.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Apr 15, 2023 at 21:28
  • You may be unaware of our sister site, English Language Learners, which is, I think, the proper place for questions of the type “can we say in English”. Native speakers would know the answer and would probably not use the structure with “we”.
    – David
    Commented Apr 15, 2023 at 21:57
  • from a British English point of view, both of your examples are quite normal and acceptable. The ellipsis of the implied noun is common: "He offered me a large coffee and a small one - I took the large." "She has two painting, a new one and an old one - I prefer the old."
    – user81561
    Commented Apr 15, 2023 at 23:55

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Normally "ignoble" is an adjective. You could say, "He committed an ignoble deed".

Yes, adjectives are sometimes used as nouns, leaving off an assumed noun of "thing" or some such very general word. A common example is that instead of saying, "He did an unthinkable thing", people will sometimes say, "He did the unthinkable."

So, "He did the ignoble" is not really grammatically correct. It would likely be understood but most English speakers would see it as odd, maybe vaguely poetic.

I wouldn't say or write it unless I had some good reason why this was preferable to a more conventional, "He did an ignoble thing".

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I've never seen "ignoble" as a noun. So strictly speaking that usage is ungrammatical. But English is a very flexible language. If I saw either of your friends examples in, say, a blog post or newspaper article I would notice the odd usage and think it a clever way to emphasize the point being made. I would not object to the grammar.

If you're thinking about using this in your own writing, think twice.

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It is grammatically possible to say "the ignoble", but "did the ignoble" doesn't strike me as idiomatic wording. It sounds better to say something like "acted ignobly", "behaved ignobly", "resorted to ignoble methods/means/tactics". It might be better still to use another word entirely. Not everything that is grammatical sounds right.

Here are some examples of "the ignoble" from Google Books. It seems to turn up especially in translations or philosophical contexts:

Hence the ignoble are prone to vanity, for they want others to have a higher opinion of them than they have of themselves.

(https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nietzsche_Heidegger_and_the_Transition_t/5vyL446_ksgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22the+ignoble+are%22&pg=PA156&printsec=frontcover)

the just and the ignoble are not by nature but by convention.

(https://www.google.com/books/edition/Oxford_Studies_in_Ancient_Philosophy_Vol/CBfGDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22the+ignoble+are%22&pg=PT12&printsec=frontcover)

it divides men who act in history into noble and ignoble and then finds that as a rule the noble are defrauded and the ignoble are victorious.

(https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revolutionary_Philosophy_of_Marxism/YnJ9DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22the+ignoble+are%22&pg=PT119&printsec=frontcover)

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    Agreed. All these examples refer to ignoble people, not actions.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Apr 16, 2023 at 9:03
  • I think it doesn't sound good because did the X is typically informal or colloquial, but ignoble is high register and old fashioned. Did the dirty is fine.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Apr 16, 2023 at 10:05
  • @StuartF - isn't 'doing the dirty' what George Orwell said pornography ('smut') did on sex?
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 16, 2023 at 10:56
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This use of the (adjective) is always in a generic, plural sense, and nearly always of people.

The ignoble could be used to mean "ignoble people in general, considered as a class or group". It is extremely unlikely to be use in any other meaning. It would not be understood to mean "ignoble acts in general", still less "a specific ignoble act".

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  • one of the great curiosities of modern art, it has nothing of the ignoble or trivial about it (about Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting The Death of Marat ) in The Conspiracy of Modern Art (2017), Luiz Renato Martins (Brill, 2017)
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 16, 2023 at 12:39
  • Hmm. You're right, @MichaelHarvey. That is a different use I hadn't thought of. It's still generic not specific, and it's also uncountable. I can't quite work out what contexts allow it. You can't say "It has the ignoble" or "It looks like the ignoble", but you can say "It smells of the ignoble" or "It is tainted by the ignoble", or even maybe "The ignoble haunts it".
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Apr 16, 2023 at 16:46

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