# $1000 worth of watch



## Esad Nr

I bought the $1000 worth of watch for $750.

I try to say that the watch is worth $1000 but I bought it for $750 . Is the sentence above good enough to describe this situation?


----------



## Myridon

No.  If you bought half of a $2000 watch, you would have $1000 worth of watch.
I bought a $1000 watch for $750.
I bought a watch worth $1000 for $750.


----------



## AlpheccaStars

Esad Nr said:


> I bought the $1000 worth of watch for $750.
> 
> I try to say that the watch is worth $1000 but I bought it for $750 . Is the sentence above good enough to describe this situation?


"Worth of X" is used for certain non-count nouns. It is not good for an item like a watch.
eg.

_I bought $1000 worth of stock in Apple Corporation. _
You paid $1000 when you bought it. It might now be worth $2000 or $100, depending on the stock market.

Here are sentences for the watch:
_I bought a $1000 watch at a 25% discount. 
I bought a watch worth $1000 for $750._


----------



## AlpheccaStars

"Worth of X" is also used for small parts in large quantities or things that are bought by weight or length. Typically these are purchased in hardware stores.

Please get me $10 worth of small nails and $30 worth of picture wire. 
I'd like $50 worth of burlap sacking.


----------



## Andygc

I do not see much of a problem with your sentence, but it does need editing. 

I bought a thousand dollars' worth of watch for seven hundred and fifty.

I do not find it at all odd to say "a thousand dollars' worth of X" when you mean an expensive item X that is worth a thousand dollars. But I wouldn't usually expect to hear "twenty cents' worth of pencil". (Apart, of course, from expecting pounds and pence rather than dollars and cents  )


----------



## AlpheccaStars

Andygc said:


> I do not find it at all odd to say "a thousand dollars' worth of X" when you mean an expensive item X that is worth a thousand dollars.


Maybe its a difference between British and American English. If I bought a million dollar house, I would not say I bought a million dollars worth of house. That seems very strange.


----------



## elroy

It doesn't matter if it's a watch, pencil, or house: "a [value] worth of [singular countable item]" sounds absolutely dreadful and totally wrong, so much so that I would've bet a _lot_ of money it was the same in British English and am pretty much shocked by what @Andygc is saying. (Good thing I didn't bet. )


----------



## Roxxxannne

AlpheccaStars said:


> Maybe its a difference between British and American English. If I bought a million dollar house, I would not say I bought a million dollars worth of house. That seems very strange.


Same here. I don't use it for a single countable noun.   To me the expression is _X's worth of [uncountable noun/plural countable noun]._
A thousand dollars' worth of paperclips
A thousand dollars' worth of buckwheat flour

I can imagine an American using it in a vain attempt to be humorous: they're imagining houses as being lumps of an uncountable thing called 'house.'


----------



## Andygc

I hope you noticed I got a Wordy thumb as well, so it's not just me.   

Edit - I see another BE thumb appeared just after I posted this.


----------



## abluter

Elroy, the expression you are so shocked by is very common in BrE, and Andygc is not violating any linguistic codes in this branch of the language.


----------



## elroy

Andygc said:


> I hope you noticed I got a Wordy thumb as well, so it's not just me.


I did.  He didn't _say_ anything, though, and I said "by what @Andygc _is saying._"  Anyway, I'm not challenging what you're saying (how could I?); I'm saying the idea that such a dreadful-sounding construction could be correct in any variety of English is shocking.


abluter said:


> Andygc is not violating any linguistic codes in this branch of the language.


I never said or implied he was.  Please re-read my post closely (and refer to my elaboration above, if necessary). 



AlpheccaStars said:


> "Worth of X" is used for certain non-count nouns.





AlpheccaStars said:


> "Worth of X" is also used for small parts in large quantities or things that are bought by weight or length. Typically these are purchased in hardware stores.


I think its uses are broader than that:
(1) It can be used with any plural noun, even if it's not small parts or things purchased in large quantities.  For example, "$10 worth of apples."  That's probably not a whole lot of apples, and apples are not "small parts," but the construction still works.
(2) It's not just weight or length; it could be volume or any other measurement: "$10 worth of gas" (sold by the gallon).
(3) I wouldn't single out hardware stores.  This is commonly used for items purchased at many different types of establishments (see my two examples).


----------



## Andygc

elroy said:


> Anyway, I'm not challenging what you're saying


I wasn't suggesting you were, I was just expressing relief that the cavalry had started to turn up before I began wondering if I was out on a limb.


----------



## elroy

I'll also add that before this, if someone had said they had purchased "$50 worth of lamp" or "$2000 worth of computer," I would've been utterly puzzled as to what they could possibly mean.  I certainly wouldn't have thought they meant "a lamp worth $50" or "a computer worth $2000."


----------



## Packard

I would use "valued at".

_I bought a watch for $750.00 and it is *valued at* $1,000.00.  So I got a good deal._


----------



## abluter

When I was an adolescent, making unwise purchases or outlays of money which I regretted too late, my father would say to me "Well, lad, that 's fifty pounds' worth of experience" - or whatever the sum happened to be. But I was a fast learner.


----------



## Roxxxannne

abluter said:


> When I was an adolescent, making unwise purchases or outlays of money which I regretted too late, my father would say to me "Well, lad, that 's fifty pounds' worth of experience" - or whatever the sum happened to be. But I was a fast learner.


That's fine -- experience can be a uncountable noun; the expression is like 'a thousand dollars' worth of buckwheat flour.'


----------



## abluter

Oh, I see, it's the *countability* that's the root of the problem.


----------



## elroy

abluter said:


> Oh, I see, it's the *countability* that's the root of the problem.


No, it's the combination of countability and singularity.

In American English:
uncountable  ($10 worth of rice)
countable + plural  ($10 worth of pens)
countable + singular  ($10 worth of clock )



elroy said:


> It doesn't matter if it's a watch, pencil, or house: "a [value] worth of [*singular countable *item]" sounds absolutely dreadful and totally wrong


----------



## Andygc

elroy said:


> if someone had said they had purchased "$50 worth of lamp" or "$2000 worth of computer," I would've been utterly puzzled as to what they could possibly mean.


It has to have context. I would not say "I've bought £50 worth of lamp" as a stand-alone sentence but I could say "I've just bought £150 worth of lamp for £75 in the sales". If a very sleek car with a Lamborghini badge went by, I might ask "Is that really £200,000 worth of car?"


----------



## abluter

Oh, well, it's still fine in BrE.


----------



## elroy

Andygc said:


> I would not say "I've bought £50 worth of lamp" as a stand-alone sentence but I could say "I've just bought £150 worth of lamp for £75 in the sales". If a very sleek car with a Lamborghini badge went by, I might ask "Is that really £200,000 worth of car?"


Doesn't make a difference.  All of that falls very high on the -o-meter.


----------



## Loob

Andygc said:


> I hope you noticed I got a Wordy thumb as well, so it's not just me.
> 
> Edit - I see another BE thumb appeared just after I posted this.


I've just added another British thumb


----------



## Wordy McWordface

I do recall a conversation I had once when out shopping with my sister.
Me: That's nice.
My sister: Hmm, but is it a hundred pounds' worth of nice?


----------



## elroy

Wordy McWordface said:


> Hmm, but is it a hundred pounds' worth of nice?


This is also okay in American English, as "nice" is not singular and countable.


----------



## Packard

I recall going to the fish store with my mother in the 1950s and early 1960s and she would say to the fishmonger: _ I'd like six dollars worth of your nova _(lox).

I worked in a gas station when I was in my teens.  Gas was $0.279 per gallon back then.  People would come in and say, "Give me three dollars worth."


----------



## Wordy McWordface

elroy said:


> This is also okay in American English, as "nice" is not singular and countable.


OK. Not a good example.

How about this as a case of quantifying a singular countable noun...

You buy a fifteen-bedroom house. I look at it and say. "Wow. That's a lot of house you've got there".

Still unacceptable?


----------



## Packard

It sounds OK conversationally.  But I would not use it in formal writing.


----------



## Roxxxannne

I would not use it if I were trying to be nice.


----------



## abluter

"That's a lot of house you've got there" wouldn't be considered rude or slighting in BrE, though it is a bit* familiar*.


----------



## Roxxxannne

I always try to be extra nice to anyone with a 15-bedroom house on the off chance that they will throw money in my direction.


----------



## elroy

Wordy McWordface said:


> "Wow. That's a lot of house you've got there".


I think this is possible in American English.  However, this is different from the construction we've been discussing because it uses "a lot of" and not "[value] worth of."

I think the reason is that in American English, this construction is used when it's possible to get a different amount or number for a different price.  You can buy $10 worth of tomatoes, $20 worth of tomatoes, or $30 worth of tomatoes.  However, if a single umbrella is available to buy at $30, you can't buy that same single umbrella at a different price, so "$30 worth of umbrella" doesn't make sense in American English.  Now, if a store sold umbrella*s*, plural, very cheaply at $5 an umbrella, then you can say "$30 worth of umbrella*s*" because you can buy "umbrella*s*" in various quantities.

You can buy umbrellas or rice in various quantities, but you can't buy a single umbrella in various quantities.  If someone says, "I bought umbrellas" or "I bought rice," you don't know how many umbrellas or how much rice they bought, so they can specify this by saying "$30 worth" or whatever.  But if someone says "I bought an umbrella," then you know that they bought exactly one single umbrella, so you don't need to specify the quantity.  You can specify the _price_ in various ways: "I bought a $30 umbrella," for example.  Here you're simply stating the cost; you're not specifying _how much_ or _how many_ of something you bought, expressed in terms of price.


----------



## CaptainZero

I've had a good ten minutes' worth of entertainment from this thread.


----------



## Myridon

To American ears, it also doesn't seem logical that one Casio is $30 worth of watch and one Tag Hauer is $1600 worth of watch, i.e. $30 worth of watch and $1600 worth of watch could both be an amount of one watch.


----------



## abluter

In "£300,000s' worth of house", "house" is being treated as a generic thing, a class of stuff, no matter how countably plural or singular it may be.  Almost in the same way as tea, experience, truth etc.
But it is, in BrE, an *informal* way of speaking, almost (I get the impression) jocular, as I hinted at in my post #29.


----------



## elroy

Myridon said:


> To American ears, it also doesn't seem logical that one Casio is $30 worth of watch and one Tag Hauer is $1600 worth of watch, i.e. $30 worth of watch and $1600 worth of watch could both be an amount of one watch.


Yes, this ties in with what I was saying.  When we say "a [value] of X," we are implying that the amount or quantity of X will be different if the value is different.  But you can't have different quantities of one watch.


----------



## Packard

Roxxxannne said:


> I would not use it if I were trying to be nice.


Be nice to the house?  The home owner?  It does not sound rude to me. 

Man (speaking to a married friend and referencing the friend's buxom wife):  _That's a lot of woman you got there._

(That sounds rude enough to get you a punch in the nose from the husband.)


But this seems like a typical vernacular speech to me.  Not rude, just casual.

Used car salesman:  _This is a lot of car for $2,000.00.  You are not going to see a better value anywhere._

Customer:  _I don't know.  It is 10 years old.  It might be a lot of headaches too._


----------



## Myridon

abluter said:


> In "£300,000s' worth of house", "house" is being treated as a generic thing, a class of stuff, no matter how countably plural or singular it may be.  Almost in the same way as tea, experience, truth etc.


In a particular area, one can place a value on housing or office space in that area by size.  Our real estate listings often give a price per square foot especially for office space.  A larger house is often proportionally more expensive than a smaller house in a predictable manner.  That doesn't apply to watches so much.


----------



## Edinburgher

It's worth pointing out that the OP actually wrote "I bought *the* $1000 worth of watch".
The combination of the definite article with "worth of" definitely doesn't work.

I'm happy to agree that there is nothing wrong in principle with "I bought *a* thousand dollars worth of watch", where this "a" could be replaced with "one", but not with "a one".
It is pretty unusual, though, for the simple situation the OP describes, and the normal idiomatic version is "I bought a thousand dollar watch".
Here you could add "one" after "a", but you could not delete "a".


----------



## elroy

Edinburgher said:


> I'm happy to agree that there is nothing wrong in principle with "I bought *a* thousand dollars worth of watch", where this "a" could be replaced with "one", but not with "a one".
> It is pretty unusual, though, for the simple situation the OP describes, and the normal idiomatic version is "I bought a thousand dollar watch".


In what situation would you not find “I bought a/one thousand dollars’ worth of watch” unusual?


----------



## Edinburgher

I think I'd always find it unusual.  It's just that sometimes it's okay to be unusual.
I think an element of jocularity would help justify, unusually, treating "watch" as a mass noun.

_I wanted to get my wife a nice watch for her birthday.  I went to the jeweler's and they had one at $1000 which I thought she would really like.  But then a gent's watch caught my eye and my fancy.  It was $500.  I bought them both, and the jeweler gave me 50% off mine, but I preferred to think of it as 25% off hers.  Either way, I got $1500 *worth of* watch for $1250._


----------



## Andygc

Isn't this going round in circles? I corrected the OP's use of "the" in post 5. We know that a particular form of words is perfectly acceptable to monolingual BE speakers here and that the same form of words seems totally weird to AE speakers here. There's no countable/uncountable logic involved - it's idiomatic usage. What's left to debate?


----------



## Roxxxannne

Packard said:


> Be nice to the house?  The home owner?  It does not sound rude to me.
> 
> Man (speaking to a married friend and referencing the friend's buxom wife):  _That's a lot of woman you got there._
> 
> (That sounds rude enough to get you a punch in the nose from the husband.)


I didn't say it was rude.  I said I wouldn't use it if I were trying to be _nice_.

"That's a lot of woman you got there" is not simply rude.  It's appallingly sexist.


----------



## elroy

Edinburgher said:


> _Either way, I got $1500 *worth of* watch for $1250._


Since there were two watches, "I got $1500 worth of watch*es* for $1250" would be fine in American English.


----------



## AlpheccaStars

elroy said:


> (3) I wouldn't single out hardware stores. This is commonly used for items purchased at many different types of establishments (see my two examples).


The hardware store was just the first example that came to mind.  They have scales to buy by weight. So do groceries for produce - I got $2 worth of red grapes today. And I filled up at the pump. My car took $20 worth of petrol.

I heard an interesting citation on the business news - Apple sold $200 million worth of iPhones in 2020.


----------



## velisarius

Andygc said:


> Isn't this going round in circles? I corrected the OP's use of "the" in post 5. We know that a particular form of words is perfectly acceptable to monolingual BE speakers here and that the same form of words seems totally weird to AE speakers here. There's no countable/uncountable logic involved - it's idiomatic usage. What's left to debate?


I think I may be the non-monolingual BE speaker Andy refers to .

Of course I'm aware that a native speaker might refer jocularly or casually to "$1,000 worth of watch", but I don't think that's going to be very helpful to the OP, who I suspect just wanted to know how to say: "I bought a $1,000-dollar watch for $750" or "I bought the watch that was worth $1,000 for $750.

I would teach a learner that "fifty dollars' worth of coffee" or "ten thousand dollars' worth of watches" are perfectly standard expressions, whereas "a thousand pounds' worth of watch" is possible in colloquial BE but exceptional. It's something that a learner doesn't need to know unless they come across it.


----------



## Edinburgher

velisarius said:


> possible in colloquial BE but exceptional


 Exactly.


----------



## elroy

Ah, so it’s not standard, like “I’m sat”?


----------



## Loob

elroy said:


> Ah, so it’s not standard, like “I’m sat”?



It's perfectly standard.


----------



## elroy

I thought @velisarius was saying it wasn’t, and you agreed with her.  I may have misunderstood something.


----------



## velisarius

In standard English grammar,_ X worth of Y_ is used where Y is a plural noun or a mass noun. An expression may be correct - or acceptable - even when it violates what's commonly known as "standard grammar".


----------



## elroy

So you think it violates standard British English grammar, whereas @Loob and @Andygc don’t.  Maybe I’ve understood this time…


----------



## Andygc

I also don't think it is exceptional. As I said a lot earlier in the thread:


Andygc said:


> It has to have context.


I don't think about when or why I use it, I just do.


----------



## velisarius

elroy said:


> So you think it violates standard British English grammar, whereas @Loob and @Andygc don’t.  Maybe I’ve understood this time…


Yes.


----------



## Loob

I read veli's _perfectly standard_ in post 45 as meaning_ normal/everyday_.

If the suggestion is that  "a thousand pounds' worth of watch" is grammatically non-standard, then I wholeheartedly disagree.  Perhaps I should remove my ...


----------



## PaulQ

Loob said:


> I should remove my ...


Don't do that!

Further to Edinburgher's #40, I think that "£xxx worth of <usually singular countable noun> is also used (i) of, or (ii) by someone who is considered brash. I say that but the singular countable noun becomes uncountable in the phrase.

(i) "He was standing there telling me that he had no money but he's got £1,000 worth of watch on his wrist - and it was new! The man's a liar."
(ii) "Of course I can afford what you're selling. There's £250,000 worth of sports car sitting on my drive and a yacht worth a million round the back. I'm not short of it, you know."


----------



## elroy

PaulQ said:


> (ii) "Of course I can afford what you're selling. There's £250,000 worth of sports car sitting on my drive and a yacht worth a million round the back. I'm not short of it, you know."


That example got progressively Britisher and Britisher.  Excellent.


----------



## AlpheccaStars

velisarius said:


> In standard English grammar,_ X worth of Y_ is used where Y is a plural noun or a mass noun. An expression may be correct - or acceptable - even when it violates what's commonly known as "standard grammar".


Well I'm having lunch today with my best friend who was born and raised in London. She advises and coaches a local theater company on British (regional) accents.  I will ask her about this expression. I'm just curious if it is a common "Britishism" or perhaps confined to one or more of the myriad of dialects.


----------



## velisarius

I don't think anyone here has suggested that it belongs to a particular dialect of BE.


----------



## kentix

I don't think it's entirely absent from American usage, but possibly much more uncommon. For instance, I wouldn't bat an eye at this sentence related in a story about a wildfire.

"As we stood watching from a safe distance, the fire came over the ridge and a million dollars worth of house disappeared before our eyes."

This is a reference to single large house being consumed by the flames.

Of course, an alternative is just:

"...and a million dollar house disappeared before our eyes"


----------



## elroy

kentix said:


> "As we stood watching, the fire came over the ridge and a million dollars worth of house disappeared."


This sounds dreadful to me and would stick out like the sorest of thumbs.


----------



## Loob

I bet you'll start hearing it everywhere now, elroy.  That's usually what happens to me.


----------



## kentix

Yes, probably.


----------



## AlpheccaStars

velisarius said:


> I don't think anyone here has suggested that it belongs to a particular dialect of BE.


Would it be a faux pas to ask about regional dialects?


----------



## Roxxxannne

Right here there on this thread there are, what, six native British English speakers.  Even though none of them has suggested it's regional, let's ask them: do you think "X pounds of house" is a regional variation?


----------



## Loob

No.


----------



## Edinburgher

Roxxxannne said:


> do you think "X pounds of house" is a regional variation?


You mean "X pounds *worth* of house", I take it.  No-one has mentioned it without.
No, I don't consider it regional, so it's "standard" in the sense of being non-regional.

I consider it "non-standard" in the sense of unusual -- the norm is that "worth of" expects either an uncountable noun or a countable plural, and the circumstances in which you can plug a normally countable noun into this uncountable role without it sounding odd are few.  "House" is not usually uncountable, but it can be in this construction -- sometimes.


----------



## Wordy McWordface

Roxxxannne said:


> Right here there on this thread there are, what, six native British English speakers.  Even though none of them has suggested it's regional, let's ask them: do you think "X pounds of house" is a regional variation?


No.


----------



## Andygc

Edinburgher said:


> You mean "X pounds *worth* of house", I take it.  No-one has mentioned it without.
> No, I don't consider it regional, so it's "standard" in the sense of being non-regional.
> 
> I consider it "non-standard" in the sense of unusual -- the norm is that "worth of" expects either an uncountable noun or a countable plural, and the circumstances in which you can plug a normally countable noun into this uncountable role without it sounding odd are few.  "House" is not usually uncountable, but it can be in this construction -- sometimes.


I find this objection to "x worth of car/house/watch/etc" strange. To me it's a perfectly ordinary form of words. As I said before, it doesn't work without some surrounding context, so I would not say "I bought two hundred pounds' worth of watch", but I'd happily say "I got two hundred pounds' worth of watch in the sale for a hundred and twenty pounds" and I would not be in the least surprised to hear it said.


----------

