Reading the ESL lesson about English Adverbs, I found, in the “High Hopes” story the word BUT in the following sentence and I couldn’t understand the meaning in such a sentence.
I stepped on a piece of grass which I thought was solid but soon discovered was anything but. I slipped immediately and began to descend.
Is there a mistake in this sentence or what does BUT mean in this case?
Thank you for this useful and interesting information.
Now I think I understood the sense. Anything but is, as you say, a fixed expression that we can use when we mean that what we suppose is not correct, but completely different or opposite.
For example, when I made my question in the forum about this expression, I thought there was a mistake or something was missing, but it was anything but.
While everyone is picking over the bones of what I wrote years ago:
I’d like to add that neither ‘it’ nor ‘there’ is needed because the relative pronoun ‘which’ links ‘grass’ with ‘anything but’. Now let it rest in peace! There seems to be a growing tendency recently for a simple question to be asked followed by a simple answer and then a series of quibbles develop and confuse the whole issue.
The point I’m making is that it started with the sentence I wrote and that’s why I made my general gripe about these endless stringy threads that go nowhere. But hush I’m falling into the quibble mode myself.
Surely you are aware that learners of English frequently have follow-up questions about particular grammar points, word usage, idioms, etc. Why get all cut and bleeding simply because a learner is trying to learn and/or understand something better? Isn’t that something this forum was designed to encourage? Why shouldn’t learners feel free to test the water with their own sentences and ask for feedback and further input? It seems to me you ought to feel elated about the fact that one of your test sentences resulted in so much discussion.
In other words, I think you ought to feel anything but defensive.
[color=darkblue]_______________________________________________________________ [size=75]“When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting.” ~ John Boorman[/size]