Ritalin Invitees on Nostr: Dare you enter the world of complex grammar? "To dare" as an intransitive verb ...

Dare you enter the world of complex grammar?

"To dare" as an intransitive verb meaning "to possess sufficient courage" doesn't take a direct object noun. It sometimes takes an infinitive. So, "to dare to do something," not "to dare something." However, a lot of times, English drops the "to" part of that infinitive and we wind up with, "to dare do something."

This is, of course, complicated by the fact that "to dare" as a transitive verb meaning "to challenge" takes a direct object. So "to dare someone to do something."

But then, of course, there's the transitive verb "to dare" meaning "to venture," as in "to dare a difficult task."

Now, as a slight digression, you might think that "to dare" would be the source of "acts of daring-do," if you'd never seen it written out, but unfortunately it's "derring-do," which it turns out is spelled that way because of a series of mistakes by printers when Middle English became New English (which was very old English, but still newer than Old English).

All that said, "How dare you?" is a cliché, basically. It's a holdover from an earlier time when English reversed verb and noun more often which we use because it's a rote construction that everyone says. And the reason for the change is that, until relatively recently, English had a nominative and accusative declension for the pronoun "you." So no one would be confused when you said, "How dare you?" because "you" would be in the nominative and thus clearly the subject of the verb "to dare," which, without a direct object, would be understood to be the intransitive form and thus, "How do you dare?"

You can see how this works if you respond to the question with your own indignant question: "How dare I?" You'll notice that you won't use the accusative form, "How dare me?" because "I" is the subject. Similarly, "How dare they?" as opposed to, "How dare them?"

The confusion lies all over the map on this one.

I could say more on the subject of the word "how," which isn't a noun at all and thus can't be the subject of the sentence, even when the sentence isn't a question, so the sentence, "How dare you?" would be left without a subject, but I think I've made whatever point it is I was making. Suffice it to say (another cliché but in the opposite manner: I'm not saying "it suffices to say," I'm actually saying "let it suffice to say," with the implied "you" of the imperative as the subject, hence the verb conjugation for "you let suffice" rather than "it suffices") that it is how I said it was.

Welcome to my ADHD brain.