No one could be more generous; he has a heart of gold.
Does the sentence mean "he is the most generous person I've ever met" or "he is very generous"?
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"I haven't met anyone as generous as him". More likely, the author states that there couldn't possibly be people more generous than the guy, to extensively express his\her feelings towards the person in a rather exaggerating manner.– M.A.R.Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 9:11
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1Could is such a versatile verb that I'm afraid it could (can?) mean either a past ability or future possibility. A very interesting question.– CowperKettleCommented Feb 6, 2015 at 9:42
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1 Answer
No one could be more generous; he has a heart of gold.
Although the sentence means that he is the most generous of all, I don't think we should necessarily take this sentence literally. You may say so to emphasize that someone is extremely or unusually generous just as the idiom goes "He is one of a million".
The use of "couldn't" with a comparative degree of an adj is quite interesting here. It indicates the meaning in the present, not in the past. According to McMillan, we do so for emphasizing that someone or someone is extremely good or bad. Here, in the sentence, it means he is extremely generous.
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My point exactly. Though @CopperKettle talks about the versatility of could, this is almost definite to be an exaggeration of of the extent he is generous.– M.A.R.Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 11:22
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@MARamezani - I do not question the exaggeration. I'm curious whether could describes a present ability or possibility (right now nobody is more generous) or a specific past occurrence (He helped me out last summer: no one could be more generous), or a past ability. Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 11:30
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@CopperKettle, indeed. Grammatically (more like, linguistically), I agree that this is very true. But it's not occurring very often in normal life.– M.A.R.Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 11:40
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And, just to stir the pot a little, contrast it with "I could care less." Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 16:37