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Sun 4 May, 2014 02:32 am
"Yes, sir, he is dead."
"But how? An accident?"
"Murder, if ever there was one upon earth."
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Does the last sentence serve the function of emphasizing the astonishment at there being a murder, without concrete meaning?
The last sentence expresses the speaker's belief that the death was a murder and not an accident. The phrase "if ever there was one upon earth" serves the function of emphasising that the speaker's belief is a very strong one, amounting to a conviction.
similar constructions:
That was a lie, if ever I heard one!
That was a good joke, if ever I heard one!
If ever a good woman trod the Earth, she was one.
This type of language is only found in old works of fiction, and is somewhat archaic, to say the least.
Seems to me the conditional subjective ought to come into play. Really not sure, but sounds to me as though it should read, "...if ever there were..."
@Frank Apisa,
Frank Apisa wrote:
Seems to me the conditional subjective ought to come into play. Really not sure, but sounds to me as though it should read, "...if ever there were..."
Hmmm... you've got me thinking now. Don't you think maybe the speaker is saying if there had ever been (definitely, not hypothetically) a murder committed on earth, this was one? I am not 100% sure though. This is not high literature (one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Adventure Of Wisteria Lodge", published in 1908).
I think that an important point may be that the material quoted is dialogue spoken by a fictional character, who is under no obligation to speak "correctly".
@Frank Apisa,
Quote:Really not sure, but sounds to me as though it should read, "...if ever there were..."
Technically yes, Frank; tho collo uses "was"
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