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What's more grammatically correct?

I knew she would be standing here, waiting for me. No, not so much as waiting but *expecting me to be here.

or

I knew she would be standing here, waiting for me. No, not so much as waiting but as expecting me to be here.

tchrist
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wyc
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    (3) No, not so much waiting as expecting me to be here. cf: One might almost suppose that he was not so much reinventing his past as confirming his present, projecting his current degree of success backward in time, ...// He overlapped Shane Warne, but says he was not so much overawed by him as misled // He was not so much a politician as an institution.Google: "he was not so much" – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '13 at 15:54

2 Answers2

2

The first structure is correct.

I knew she would be standing here, waiting for me. No, not so much as waiting but expecting me to be here.

No need for as in the second part. The first instance of as used is a part of the idiomatic expression not so much as itself and not a prefactory to waiting.

The more common idiom however, is to place the as in the second part without but to convey exactly the same meaning.

not so much sth as sth

I knew she would be standing here, waiting for me. No, not so much as waiting but as expecting me to be here.

Kris
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  • I find the first structure to be almost impossible to parse. As you say, the idiom is "not so much A as B," so leaving out the second "as" creates both idiomatic and syntactic issues. Perhaps removing the first "as" would help, but not much. – Rodney Atkins Dec 15 '17 at 18:38
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Neither rendition in the example is the best. Proper English idioms suggest the use of "not so much ... as ..." Example:

I knew she would be standing here, waiting for me. No, not so much waiting, as expecting me to be here.

Katherine Lockwood
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Justin Liu
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