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The sky is dark blue.

Source:

BBC English

Catherine: The sky is dark blue. The sky is dark blue.

Finn: So, is blue an adjective or adverb?

Catherine: It’s an adjective. Blue is describing the noun sky. Now number two: it's actually the same sentence but this time, think about the word dark. Is dark an adjective or an adverb?

Finn: The sky is dark blue.

Catherine: Right. So, is dark an adjective or adverb?

Finn: Dark here is an adverb.

Thanks for the discussion.

It is interesting to read how the discussion is geared towards the possible explanations of the usage of dark as an adverb.

I've checked several dictionaries before starting this post. Dark is NOT an adverb. If dark is not an adverb, how and why can it be used as an adverb?

In this case, what is wrong to have dark as an adjective in the sentence?

Community
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Organic Heart
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  • Can I say "The sky is darkly blue" ?? – GEdgar Jul 14 '19 at 15:13
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    The linked video doesn't work for me, so here's a link to the lesson transcript. In there Catherine says You mentioned that referring to verbs was only one thing that adverbs do. So, where else can we use them?, to which Finn replies *Adverbs can also describe adjectives, and even other adverbs.* So essentially this is a matter of terminology - there's no adverb in The sky is dark or The sky is blue, but there is one in The sky is dark* blue*. – FumbleFingers Jul 14 '19 at 15:29
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    @FumbleFingers That source is wrong. Hues can only ever be darker blue, never dark bluer. :) – tchrist Jul 14 '19 at 21:16
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    @EdwinAshworth I can find no reputable source that classifies dark in dark blue as an adverb. Ditto for light, pale, faint in such compounds as light grey, pale lavender. – tchrist Jul 14 '19 at 21:20
  • @EdwinAshworth: Agreed. As Fumble Fingers says, it is just a matter of terminology (as it is with many linguistic disagreements, whether the participants know it or not); in this case, it is indeed traditionally classified as an adverb, although there are arguments against it. Any proper discussion of parts of speech ought to begin with definitions and criteria if it is to make any sense. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jul 14 '19 at 22:10
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    I have checked several dictionaries before posting this. Dark is not an adverb. – Organic Heart Jul 15 '19 at 02:38
  • Related previous questions: Dark' and 'light' functioning as adverbs or adjectives in the sentence “The dark brown coat will match the light brown pants perfectly”, “Bright” Part of speech – herisson Jul 15 '19 at 03:57
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    @tchrist: I have no strong opinion on the terminology here, but won't you accept "BBC Learning English" as linked to in my first comment counts as a "reputable source"? I seem to recall that in some terminologies, *adjectives* are simply a specific subset of *adverbs* anyway. But my comment was only really intended to justify/explain my closevote (POB), on the grounds that some "authorities" (specifically, that cited BBC page) say that *dark* is indeed an adverb in the cited context, *because it modifies an "adjective"*. – FumbleFingers Jul 15 '19 at 13:13
  • @FumbleFingers Just because gold glistens doesn't mean that everything that glistens is gold. Rubber baby buggy bumpers sports neither adverbs nor adjectives, only nouns. It doesn't matter that those words are modifying other words. Shiny yes, but still only fool's gold. – tchrist Jul 15 '19 at 19:31
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    Possible duplicate of "Bright" Part of speech – herisson Jul 15 '19 at 20:54
  • Dark is NOT an adverb. If dark is not an adverb, how and why can it be used as an adverb? Not to forget the source is from BBC and it is cited as a statement. – Organic Heart Jul 16 '19 at 01:17
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    See the related commentary under Is a dark polka dot necktie dark? John Lawler: Blue is the name of a color; names are usually nouns. I suspect we have a special dispensation for color words, like we do for many other semantically-crucial word sets. Greg Lee: @JohnLawler, of course "blue" is a noun. I would never deny that, nor does McCawley. That's why, he reasons, it can be modified by the adjective "dark". – tchrist Jul 16 '19 at 15:07
  • The function of dark in dark blue is as a secondary modifier (in this case, an adjective modifier). // I've deleted the out-of-date claim that 'many see this as an adverb function, the modifying of an adjective'. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 23 '22 at 16:14

7 Answers7

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The answer to the question “Why is dark an adverb in this sentence?” is that it is not one; that source is wrong. That’s because dark cannot ever be an adverb, let alone here. It’s just that color-words can behave somewhat curiously.

We have various related questions about this curiosity, including this one. John Lawler’s suspicion about color words having a special dispensation seems instructive:

John Lawler: Blue is the name of a color; names are usually nouns. I suspect we have a special dispensation for color words, like we do for many other semantically-crucial word sets.

Greg Lee: @JohnLawler, of course "blue" is a noun. I would never deny that, nor does McCawley. That's why, he reasons, it can be modified by the adjective "dark".

So it seems colors can be nouns for modification purposes in that they take adjectives to qualify them. The resulting multiword compound, the adjectivally qualified color like dark red or robin’s egg blue, is used to further describe another noun. The whole compound can then be qualified by intensifiers like very.

I'm guessing that we can use adjective ordering rules and perhaps constituency tests to show that the whole multiword part about the color counts as one single syntactic constituent. Therefore you must look at grammatical roles these phrases play in the grammar, not at the internal parts of speech of individual words within that phrase. Otherwise you get nonsense results the way you get when a gerund clause’s head VERB-ing word gets mistakenly called a noun when it’s really a verb. Calling it a noun is a common error — but calling is only a verb there at the start of this sentence, not a noun. I suspect this is the same class of error in calling dark an adverb when it’s actually an adjective.

What the Dictionary says...

Regarding blue, the OED says:

Often with modifying word indicating intensity (as bright blue, dark blue, light blue, etc.), drawing a comparison with an object or another colour (as indigo blue, lavender blue, powder blue, etc.), or making a (sometimes arbitrary) association with a person or thing (as French blue, royal blue, navy blue), etc.

But those “qualifying words” certainly are not adverbs. Indeed, the OED says that dark is an adjective when it has this color-related sense:

3c. Prefixed, as a qualification, to adjectives of colour: Deep in shade, absorbing more light than it reflects; the opposite of light. (Usually hyphened with the adj. when the latter is used attributively.)

And here are two citations provided of this:

  • 1859 J. Ruskin Two Paths v. 202
    That lovely dark purple colour of our Welsh and Highland hills is owing, not to their distance merely, but to their rocks.
  • 1863 M. L. Whately Ragged Life Egypt xvii. 163
    Clad in the ordinary dark-blue drapery.

Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers

Why do they say this is an adjective? If you think it through, you’ll see why dark cannot be an adverb here, only an adjective.

What’s your favorite color?
Hot pink.
You mean like your hot pink sunglasses?
Exactly! All my sunglasses are hot pink!

If someone tells you their favorite color is hot pink, it seems reasonable to call pink a noun and hot an adjective. But now applying that to sunglasses doesn't swap around all the parts of speech into something new.

This happens with colors all the time:

  • cerulean blue skies
  • cherry red sunsets
  • cobalt blue skies
  • safety green vests
  • royal purple stoles
  • saffron yellow robes
  • robin's egg blue eyes
  • electric pink sunglasses

The last word in each of those noun phrases is a noun, but the first word of each is not an adverb. It is either a noun or an adjective in each case. Cobalt is a noun; it does not suddenly become an adjective when talking about a cobalt blue nor does it become an adverb when it is used in our cobalt blue skies

This is just like how tinted is not an adverb in tinted glass windows, or like how in the whole tongue-teaser rubber baby buggy bumpers, there are no adverbs nor even any adjectives.

tchrist
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    While "dark bluer" is ungrammatical, "more dark blue" is grammatical, at least for me. (And the meaning is different from "darker blue"--the "more" is modifying the entire compound adjective "dark blue".) – Eric Wofsey Jul 15 '19 at 02:24
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    @tchrist Right. Before starting this post, I have checked several dictionaries and dark is never an adverb. – Organic Heart Jul 15 '19 at 02:25
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    While your sources didn't analyze that as an adverb, I do not see why such analysis should be wrong. Indeed, the translation to other languages would often use clear adverbs. Would that require "darkly red" in English for an adverb modifying the adjective? – Vladimir F Героям слава Jul 15 '19 at 06:22
  • Isn't it that "dark blue" is a compound? Compare to German "dunkles Blau" and "Dunkelblau". – rexkogitans Jul 15 '19 at 07:48
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    Simply because you can't grade "blue" doesn't mean it isn't an adjective. There are plenty of adjectives that are not gradable in general (e.g. *boringer), and it is not that curious that preceding a normally gradable adjective with an adverb might make it ungradable. Your position that "blue" is not an adjective becomes less defensible when, rather than it being a subject complement of a copula, it is directly modifying a noun, e.g. "Look at the dark blue sky". – Acccumulation Jul 15 '19 at 18:20
  • @Acccumulation My point is that dark is not an adverb here or anywhere. If it were, then you would call all kinds of things adverbs that are not: cherry red sunsets, cobalt blue skies, safety green vests, royal purple stoles, saffron yellow robes, robin's-egg blue eyes, electric pink sunglasses, and infinitely more besides. No analysis that claims the first word in each of those sets is an adverb can be trustef; they've all adjectives or nouns, not adverbs. Incredible anyone could think otherwise. – tchrist Jul 15 '19 at 18:54
  • Another good example would be calling something sky blue (something other than the sky of course). Here the word sky, generally a noun, is used in a sort adverb-like way, but it's clearly part of the compound adjective sky blue. – Darrel Hoffman Jul 15 '19 at 19:08
  • In the phrase "the dark blue sky" we clearly see that "sky" is a noun, and one interpretation is that "blue" is an adjective modifying it, so that "dark", modifying "blue" would therefore be an adverb. I would argue that it should be "the dark-blue sky" because "dark blue" is a compound, and a compound adjective should be hyphenated. Now change the word order and say "The sky is dark blue" and you have "blue as a predicate adjective, and "dark" is an adverb modifying it. Or "dark blue" is a compound as above. – Monty Harder Jul 15 '19 at 19:09
  • The issue is that "dark blue" can be considered a compound noun that names a color, just like "blue-green". – Barmar Jul 15 '19 at 19:25
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    @MontyHarder Just because adjectives modify nouns does not mean that all noun modifiers are adjectives. Same with adverbs modifying adjectives. If roses are red, then just because you see a red flower doesn't mean that you've just seen a rose. The logic is faulty. – tchrist Jul 15 '19 at 19:26
  • "a red flower" -- "red" is an adjective. "The color of the flower is red" -- "red" is a noun. – Barmar Jul 15 '19 at 19:29
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    @tchrist I don't know what point you're trying to make here with the comment about "red" and "rose". The theory that anything that modifies an adjective (or verb) is an adverb is commonly taught by grammarians. I disagree with that theory (if for no reason other than possessives, such as "Bob's sister's dog's dish", which clearly modify nouns, but are modified as if they are nouns) but the "if it modifies an adjective, it's an adverb" rule is commonly taught nevertheless. – Monty Harder Jul 15 '19 at 19:32
  • @MontyHarder I can't support calling ruby an adverb in ruby red slippers lest a fight over whose slippers are rubier red than Dorothy’s should ensue. :) – tchrist Jul 15 '19 at 19:49
  • @tchrist I prefer to call "ruby" the first word of a compound in "ruby-red slippers", neatly sidestepping the problem. The convention of hyphenating the compound adjective helps to visually group them as a single entity much like parentheses, brackets, and braces in mathematics "(ruby red) slippers" or "{[(Bob's sister)'s neighbor]'s dog}'s dish" – Monty Harder Jul 15 '19 at 19:57
  • I would also add that more specifically, it is a further predicative adjective, to the predicative expression is blue, where blue here functions like some sort of hybrid between a predicative adjective and a predicative nominal. Essentially, the expanded expression would be The sky is blue [as adjective], where the blue[as noun] is dark. In the first sub-sentence, blue is a predicative adjective to 'sky', and in the second, dark is a predicative adjective to 'blue'. – Tasos Papastylianou Jul 15 '19 at 20:07
  • I mean, darkly is fine and dandy as an adverb of dark … and flat/bare adverbs are also fine and dandy, so by extension, dark is a fine and dandy adverb :-) (that's not to say it's an adverb here, just that it can be elsewhere) – user0721090601 Jul 16 '19 at 02:20
  • @guifa I figure that because cobalt is still a noun in cobalt blue, there's no way that it becomes an adverb even with a cobalt blue sky. Ditto with robins and their eggs. ;) – tchrist Jul 16 '19 at 03:52
  • @tchrist But dark is unquestionably an adverb in the somewhat less unquestionable “She turned and laughed dark at him”. In theory, flat adverbs should work fine in a context like that, but I’m struggling to find any context where dark works as a flat adverb. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 10:00
  • @EricWofsey "Dark bluer" isn't ungrammatical. It's the noun verb of the verb "dark bluing", where "bluing" involves using chemicals to produce a layer of altered surface properties on a metal. – nick012000 Jul 16 '19 at 11:04
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: Where have you encountered "laughed dark", and do you actually find it a reasonable thing to say? Because to my ear that just sounds wrong, and (even despite the increasingly common tendency in modern colloquial English to use undeclined adjectives as adverbs) definitely should be "laughed darkly". – Ilmari Karonen Jul 16 '19 at 12:13
  • @IlmariKaronen I haven’t encountered it, no – and as I said, I find it at the very least dubitable and jarring, borderline ungrammatical. I’m sure there’s someone, somewhere who does use dark as a flat adverb, though, which was guifa’s point: the fact that it’s not an adverb here doesn’t preclude it from possibly being one in other circumstances. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 12:16
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Dark is not an adverb. If it is not, how can it be used as one under any circumstances? – Organic Heart Jul 16 '19 at 12:49
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    @Jalene “Dictionaries do not list dark as an adverb” is not the same as “Dark is not an adverb”. Dictionaries don’t get to decide what word class a given word is – they’re generally not even very good at correctly reporting word classes. Any adjective that can be turned into an adverb by adding -ly can theoretically also be used as an adverb as it is (this is called a flat adverb), though there are many adjectives where it sounds quite odd to do so. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 12:57
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Other than dicitonaries, can you recommend where else can I find reputable and reliable sources? – Organic Heart Jul 16 '19 at 19:38
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    @Jalene The most well-suited place is a grammar (the most expansive and popular is the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) by Pullum & Huddleston, but it’s very big and very expensive), but it can often be hard to find a section that deals with a specific use of a specific word in grammars. Sadly, there are no good reference works which list word classes, in part because word classification is a complex and unfixed matter. It would be nice if dictionaries were more reliable in this aspect, but their classifications are based on outdated models, too numerous to update now. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 19:51
  • But there are many Google hits for 'dark yellowish', and 'yellowish' is certainly never a noun. Similarly 'dark golden' .... – Edwin Ashworth Sep 23 '22 at 16:19
  • @EdwinAshworth That's an artifact of our orthography. It's really the "-ish" derivational suffix used to convert nouns to adjectives applied to the entire "(dark-yellow)" compound noun. Nothing exceptional. You have the same problem with "That red apple looks pretty un-(dark yellow) to me." – tchrist Sep 23 '22 at 16:23
  • Or an unfortunate example showing our POS-tagging systems are defective. You know that I consider 'modifier-of-adjective' one needed class (though admittedly dark blue is far more unary than intensely blue and certainly than startlingly blue). – Edwin Ashworth Sep 23 '22 at 18:30
  • @EdwinAshworth You can have a dark-blue sky. Now notice that although you can have a bluer sky today than yesterday ᴀɴᴅ you can have a darker sky today than yesterday, that you can ᴏɴʟʏ have a darker-blue sky today than yesterday, ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ a ❌dark-bluer sky today than yesterday. Why? Because the comparative-degree marker goes on the adjective, not on the noun. As a syntactic constituent, the unremarkable noun phrase darker blue with its adjective-plus-noun is merely a modifier of sky in its own right, but said NP is no adjective, only a modifier—as I have just proven. QED. – tchrist Sep 23 '22 at 21:10
  • Usages like 'Race haringtoni has wing more rounded than in other races; stevensi is similar to previous but slightly darker, browner above and darker fulvous on flanks' show that [darker] [colour adjective] strings are used. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 24 '22 at 14:32
  • @EdwinAshworth "darker browner" is not a constituent there; it's in two different phrases that just happen to be sequential. Try reading it as if it were written with a colon, not a comma. See? – tchrist Sep 24 '22 at 14:35
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    I'd hoped 'darker fulvous' would be the obvious string under consideration. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 24 '22 at 15:24
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Adjectives are used to describe nouns, i.e. the car is red.

Adverbs are most commonly used to describe verbs, i.e he fought valiantly

But adverbs can also describe adjectives. How is the car red? Is it blazingly red? Is it cheesily red? Cheekily red maybe?

That is the case for your sentence. The sky is blue. How is it blue? Darkly. It is not being blue lightly, it is being blue darkly.

BUT

It doesn't always need to be this way. One can also have adjective combinations, which would be what most would assume the sentence in question is employing. An adjective combination is where two conceptually separate adjectives join to describe one concept. Dark blue is an adjective, built by two, working in a combination. The sentence in question is ambigious in that sense, as we can't know whether it's an adverb describing an adjective, or an adjective combination. The only person that can really decide that, is the author. But in this case, it doesn't really matter which one it is, as the meaning remains the same either way.

A. Kvåle
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    IOW, "darkly" describes "is", not "blue". Think teen angst. – RonJohn Jul 15 '19 at 02:08
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    Yeah, I've never thought of that. Adverbs that "are describing adjectives" are really just describing the verb "to be". @RonJohn – A. Kvåle Jul 15 '19 at 16:15
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    The word in question is not "darkly", it's "dark". So I don't see how the discussion about "darkly" is relevant.. Not to mention that I don't think "darkly" really ever has that meaning. You would never describe a dark blue sky as "darkly blue". – Blorgbeard Jul 15 '19 at 18:15
  • @Blorgbeard indeed, but you might call it a *cobalt blue sky* or a *cerulean blue sky. It's inconceivable that cobalt* and cerulean would be adverbs there, or anywhere. Otherwise people are going to start inventing adverbs all over the place, like in rubber baby buggy bumpers, a noun phrase wholly lacking in not only adverbs but in adjectives as well. – tchrist Jul 15 '19 at 18:59
  • @tchrist I don't really understand what you're saying. As far as I can tell, we are in agreement. "Dark", "cobalt" and "cerulean" can be used as (part of) adjectives, but not as adverbs. "Darkly" can be used as an adverb, but only when the meaning is figurative, because it doesn't make sense to modify an action with a colour. E.g. "It is being blue darkly" is nonsensical. – Blorgbeard Jul 15 '19 at 20:12
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    @Blorgbeard Yes, I was agreeing with you. I chopped up the comment a little oddly upon edit and left it less than stellarly clear. – tchrist Jul 15 '19 at 20:27
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    @Blogbeard My read of it is that omitting the ly and using dark to mean darkly might be a sort of old-fashioned and/or poetic affectation. Changing the word order might help: "Dark the sky is blue."? The original quote, I think, is claiming that this change is not even necessary for it to have the alternate sense. Can't come up with a good similar example offhand, but I'm imagining something Tolkeinian. – dgould Jul 16 '19 at 00:32
  • @A.Kvåle Adverbs that modify adjectives modify adjectives – not the verb is. Adverbs can also modify the verb is, but that’s a different thing. In “the letter was beautifully written”, it makes little sense to say that beautifully modifies is, especially because you can remove the verb altogether: “the beautifully written letter lay on the table”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 17:40
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    @JanusBahsJacquet No, it modifies the verb "to write", which is acting like an adjective. – A. Kvåle Jul 16 '19 at 18:41
  • @A.Kvåle No. Written is a past participle, which has both verbal and adjectival properties – the actual verb in the sentence is is written, a passive construction of write, consisting of the auxiliary is and the past participle. That’s neither here nor there, though: beautifully modifies neither auxiliary is nor to write, neither of which appears in the second sentence. More importantly, you can substitute any true adjective and it works the same: “the letter was beautifully ornate/square/papery/…”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 18:50
  • @JanusBahsJacquet yes but is "beautifully" describing "ornate", or how it was "being ornate". If you look at it this way, all adjectives are verbs (they aren't but just look at it like that right now). If you are blue, then you are BEING blue, but how exactly are you being blue? Beautifully. Your act of existence in relation to the trait of being blue is beautifully done. It's all a bit silly and I don't really have any authority on the matter, probably less than you, but that's how I view it. – A. Kvåle Jul 16 '19 at 22:11
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    @A.Kvåle It’s not an unreasonable view in predicative clauses (“the sky is beautifully blue”), but what do you do in attributive phrases (“the beautifully blue sky”)? Here you don’t have the choice of saying that beautifully describes the sky’s ‘being blue’, because there is no ‘being’ at all, without having to invent relative clauses (“the sky, which was being blue in a beautiful way, stretched from horizon to horizon”), and that just seems needlessly troublesome, compared to just saying the adverb modifies the adjective, punto finale. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 16 '19 at 22:26
  • I see your point. Your way is much cleaner. I guess it all depends on which authority you wish to listen to, like Lee Daniel Crocker said @JanusBahsJacquet – A. Kvåle Jul 16 '19 at 23:49
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I can conceive of a sky that's *a* beautiful blue [in color], but I'm suspicious of trying to ditch the article there. – tchrist Jul 17 '19 at 18:41
  • @tchrist Beautiful as a flat adverb doesn’t grate too much for me. It has a very Southern feeling to me, like I can imagine a southerner sayin’ sum’n laak, “Sky sure is beautiful blue today”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 17 '19 at 18:50
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It's used as part of a set phrase which acts as an adjective. That being said, it's easy to imagine an adverb answering the question "how", as in

Q: "How blue is the sky?"
A: "It's dark blue." <- possibly an adverb, with the meaning that it's mostly black and a little bit blue

or

A: "It's slightly blue" <- definitely an adverb

Brian Minton
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It might be an adverb, or it might not be, depending on which "authority" you want to listen to. The English language has been around for much longer than our attempts to systematize it and slap labels on things, and our fumbling attempts to do so are crude at best. There's clearly no dispute here about meaning or usage, and it diagrams nicely either way, so I see no particular reason to be pedantic about it.

Lee Daniel Crocker
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I always think the words are not stuck to one part of the speech. They take positions depending on the usage. For eg. Parents are invited to an orientation (Parents - noun) There is a Parents' orientation Program on Sunday (here, I would say Orientation is a noun and Parents' is playing the role of an adjective)

Similarly, It is red. (red - adjective) It is dark red (anything that modifies an adjective is (also) an adverb by definition, so in this case, I would say 'dark' is an adverb)

Meera Balaganesan
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    This seems to disagree with the accepted answer that says "dark cannot ever be an adverb". So, perhaps, you might like to add some supporting sources for your assertion. – KillingTime Sep 23 '22 at 09:29
  • Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Community Sep 23 '22 at 11:34
  • But your answer is right, which is important. Parts of speech is an old term that only applies well to highly-inflected languages like Latin, where every word is color-coded with inflections to tell you how it fits together with the other words. In uninflected languages like English or Mandarin, practically any word can be used as practically any part of speech. In particular, the difference between adverb and adjective is especially hard to spot. Probly adverbs are dying out as a POS in English, the way "participle" did in the original 8 (which didn't include adjectives). – John Lawler Nov 29 '22 at 16:54
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About 60 years ago I was taught that when a word modifies the meaning of an adjective that modifying word is, by definition, an adverb. This was a hard and fast rule in the 60s.

Since then the rules and definitions for English grammar have gotten much more complicated.

Hot Licks
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  • Yes; OED states that 'dark' modifies 'blue' in 'dark blue' (which makes perfect sense). // I don't like the label 'adverb' for say intensifiers such as 'very', 'intensely' ... 'worryingly' even ... before an adjective; I see these 'modifiers-of-adjectives' as meriting at least one different word class. Some go further than intensification, speaking of say a state induced. 'Dark' doesn't intensify as such, but grades the type of blueness on one scale (light blue ... dark blue).. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 23 '22 at 16:09
  • The rules haven't changed, but people who learned grammar rules in grammar school have grown up and found they were lied to. It wasn't the teachers' fault -- their teachers didn't understand it either, so they went by "hard and fast" rules, when grammar rules are very soft and flexible, with many exceptions -- though they do go by awfully fast. – John Lawler Nov 29 '22 at 16:48
0

I am sure Dark in the sentence is an adjective in the form of a compound adjective that an adjective can be put before the other adjective.

Sean Kim
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    Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Community Nov 29 '22 at 13:18