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His eyebrows twitched, almost tempted to just stand up and shove at the kid.

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  • This story contains much bad syntax.
    – user6951
    Jan 27, 2015 at 14:53

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This is an odd sentence. It is either a deliberate attempt to personify the eyebrows, or a (somewhat comical) error. One might expect:

His eyebrows twitched, and he was almost tempted to just stand up and shove at the kid.

Tempted is an adjective formed from the past-participle of the bare infinitive 'tempt'. There is an implicit verb-to-be in the sentence, so I would call tempted a predicate adjective here. The entire phrase "almost tempted to ....at the kid" modifies the subject, "eyebrows" in the original sentence. In the rewritten version the phrase is predicate complement.

When one is "tempted", one feels the need to act or to do something, so it is usually accompanied by an explicit or implicit infinitive phrase. Here, "tempted to stand up and shove at..."

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  • okay thanks. I actually just copied part of the sentence. It makes sense in the original context. And lol I re-read the sentence and it is indeed comical.
    – stellahung
    Jan 27, 2015 at 11:01

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