I am (of) medium height/build. | WordReference Forums

I am (of) medium height/build.

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kuleshov

Senior Member
Spain Spanish
I have no idea why people stopped using the preposition of in these two expressions when we describe physical appearance:
She is (of) medium height.
He is (of) medium build.
I understand the pattern with of, but when did these two expressions start being used without the of?
Are there any other expressions which are used without of? :confused:
 
    • She is of medium height. :tick:
    He is of medium build. :tick:

    These are common and standard. I don't think we've stopped using 'of' here. Why do you think we have?

    kuleshov said:
    Are there any other expressions which are used without of? :confused:
    Click to expand...

    Yes. Probably thousands of them. :)

    She is tall, short, happy, miserable, underestimated, married, pretty, petty, aggressive . . .
     
    You might experiment with the Google Books Ngram Viewer, comparing phrases like "is medium height" and "is of medium height" or "is a reddish color" and "is of a reddish color".
    Their frequencies are displayed on a time line, and you asked when.
     
    You seem to be protesting about the way English is spoken: Language evolves all the time - it is like protesting that humans evolved from lesser hominids.
    kuleshov said:
    I understand the pattern with of, but when did these two expressions start being used without the of?
    Click to expand...
    Are you looking for a particular year in which this construction changed? i would suspect that the popularity of of started to decline was about the middle of the 19th century but it still exists, particularly in more formal contexts.
     
    I know both ways -with and without of- are correct in English. But when we say She is tall, tall is an adjective; but when we say She is medium height, we are using a noun: height after the verb to be, and that's what my question is about.

    We say I am married, but we don't say *I am medium marriage. That's why I was asking about other patterns with of + adjective + noun.

    I am not protesting, I am insatiable curiosity;)
     
    According to the above-mentioned Ngram Viewer,
    "...is of medium height" is alive and well in published books.
    Meanwhile "...is medium height" has never claimed more than 20% of the territory.
    Instead of "Why is of being lost?" (as if it were a trend), ask "Why is of sometimes omitted?"
    I speculate: Maybe it is felt to be okay to equate a person with a noun phrase indicating their height
    based on the model of an exact measurement that sounds like a noun phrase: "I'm six feet tall." (This phrase is actually challenging to parse.)
    P.S.: What's the grammatical way to say "I am medium marriage"? Would it be "I'm half-married"?:)
     
    Maybe it's only those two: with the nouns build and height, when we describe physical apperance.
    Again: I'm whatever tall; tall is an adjective: easy to understand.
    Thanks for the percentages: it's good to know the expressions with of are much more frequent!
     
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