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It's more headache than it's worth.
It's more trouble than it's worth.

Is this "worth" adjective or noun?

I think the adjective "worth" needs an object after it.

However, there is no object of worth in this sentence.

What is the wordclass of this "worth"?

Ran
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    "Worth" belongs to the categories noun and adjective: You should assess your net worth (noun) ~ This painting is worth thousands of dollars (adjective). The adjective takes an NP complement. Your example has the adjective form. We know this because it has "it" as predicand. – BillJ Dec 25 '22 at 18:18
  • Worth is an odd noun and an odd adjective. – John Lawler Dec 25 '22 at 18:31
  • Note that "worth" is one of just four adjectives that can be transitive, i.e. that take a noun phrase complement (the others are "like, "unlike" and due"). Its adjectival status is clear from that fact that it functions predicatively as complement of the verb "be": it is worth thousands of dollars. The evidence that it is an adjective (or a noun) is clear. – BillJ Dec 26 '22 at 09:36
  • @BillJ Its adjectival status would be clearer if worth licensed not only predicative use following be but also attributive use preceding its noun: when something is worth your time it’s not a ❌worth your time thing. (Compare how people can be away/afraid/asleep but never ❌away/afraid/asleep people, or the next town can be three miles away yet never a ❌three-mile-away town). This restriction blocks its use in fused modifier-head constructions: toy trains can be worth a pretty penny and beyond your means but you can’t say that the ❌worth a pretty penny are beyond your means. – tchrist Dec 26 '22 at 17:25
  • @Ran Are you clear now that "worth" is an adjective in your examples? As I said, this is proven by the fact that "worth" can be PC to the verb "become", which prepositions cannot. – BillJ Dec 27 '22 at 13:15
  • @BillJ Yes, thank you – Ran Dec 27 '22 at 15:39
  • This may be a bit off topic, but I think trouble in "It is more trouble" is a noun, not an adjective." It = trouble" should work, given that it is the same structure as "He is a doctor".　However, in practice, I think it means 'it is not worth the trouble', which implies 'the work has more trouble than the worth'. 　So, I think that "of" is omitted in this sentence now, but "It is (of) more trouble than ..." would be correct. – Ran Dec 28 '22 at 02:16
  • Semantically, I think "trouble" is working as an adjective, not a noun. How should I think about it?　@BillJ – Ran Dec 28 '22 at 02:22
  • No: "trouble" is a noun because it is determined by the determinative "more", which can't determine an adjective. – BillJ Dec 28 '22 at 09:51
  • @BillJ It = trouble" should work, given that it is the same structure as "He is a doctor".　However, in practice, I think it means 'it is not worth the trouble', which implies 'the work has more trouble than the worth'. So, If "It" is "the task", then I don't think the task = more trouble.　(the correct is the task is troublesome.) So, I think that "of" is omitted in this sentence now, but "It is (of) more trouble than ..." would be correct. What do you think? – Ran Dec 28 '22 at 10:36

3 Answers3

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Seeing this typical question about parts of speech, with its typically confident assertions in reply that X is this part of speech, or that part of speech, reminds me that such questions have no good answers in English, and even if answered confidently, such assertions carry no information beyond the certainty of the asserter.

In English, pretty much any word can be used for any part of speech, and we have not yet been vouchsafed a vision of the true, the blushful, the Real Parts of Speech for English. Though it is fun to argue about them, like dragons and unicorns and DPs and other mythical beasts. Worth is a really good example of where the POS system falls down.

I published a paper many years ago about the meanings and uses of the English words value, worth, price, and cost, which all stem from the same set of contexts. What it says on p.391 about the grammatical category of worth is:

"the categorial status of worth is a matter of some dispute. It has variously been claimed to be a preposition and an adjective (cf Maling 1983 and McCawley 1985). If it is a preposition, then it must have a homophonous derived noun, since phrases like the worth of the book are common enough. On the other hand, if it is an adjective, then it must be transitive, since it has a complement; this is surely unusual -- or even impossible, according to some theories of grammatical categories. I will have nothing to say about the categorial status of worth here, since the matter is irrelevant to its meaning; let it stand that no matter what category worth may belong to, it is an atypical example of the category."

  • Heny, Frank; and Richards, Barry (eds). 1983. Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and related puzzles (2 Vols). Dordrech: Reidel.
  • Maling, Joan. 1983. "Transitive adjectives: A case of categorial reanalysis." In Heny and Richards 1983.
  • McCawley, James D. 1985. Review article on Heny and Richards (eds) 1983. In Language, vol 61, pp 849-62.
John Lawler
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    Thank you very much. I understood you to say that it should be understood as one exceptional usage of the word, an idiom. – Ran Dec 26 '22 at 00:05
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The idiomatic phrases are

It's worth the trouble.

and

It's worth the headache.

where what you call objects are in italics.

More trouble than it's worth (and I would add here more headache than it's worth as a synonym] is an idiom which Cambridge defines as

idiom informal (also not worth the trouble)
If something is more trouble than it's worth or is not worth the trouble, it is not important or useful enough to make an effort doing it.

Worth is one of the few transitive adjectives in English. You can find an extended argument that worth belongs to the category of adjectives in CAGEL pp. 607-608.

These transitive adjectives take what Rodney Huddleston calls noun phrase (NP) complements. LanguageLog explains:

English adjectives generally don't take NP complements. The number of exceptions is extraordinarily small: one example is worth (notice how we say worth my time, not *worth of my time). Such exceptional adjectives have long been noted; Fowler comments on worth in his Modern English Usage (1926), and points out that it could be called a transitive adjective. But such adjectives are extremely rare in the dictionary. And yet some new ones appear to have been creeping into the language.

In your two examples, the 2 NP complements are omitted to avoid repetition.

Note: The rest of the adjectives which are intransitive can take complements, but not Noun Phrases complements.

fev
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  • Thank you. Does the second example statement mean that it is not worth the trouble and is just a trouble? – Ran Dec 25 '22 at 16:47
  • The sentence does not contain words with the exact meaning of "is just a trouble", but one could infer that from what is said. – fev Dec 25 '22 at 16:51
  • Does the sentence only means that it's not worth the trouble? – Ran Dec 25 '22 at 16:53
  • Yes, I think I have just explained that. – fev Dec 25 '22 at 16:54
  • Yes; it's an adjective in the OP's example. Importantly, "worth" has "it" as predicand and hence is an adjective, not a noun. – BillJ Dec 25 '22 at 18:20
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Dictionaries mention "worth" as an adjective. (Cambridge, Collins, Longman, Mcmillan, American Heritage)

However, not all are as categorical.

(OALD) worth adjective [not before noun] used like a preposition, followed by a noun, pronoun or number, or by the -ing form of a verb

The SOED, while still considering this word to be an adjective, makes an important distinction.

(SOED) pred. a. (now usu. w. prepositional force)

Merriam-Webster goes all the way and defines "worth" as a preposition.

From a syntactic point of view this is a word that qualifies only with difficulty to only one of the criteria for adjectives; out of the four features it can be said that only the possibility of finding it in predicative use can be considered. It does not qualify nouns in attributive use (a worth thing), premodification by "very" is not possible (very worth) and finally it does not stand the test of comparisons (more worth than, "worthy" does). As to predicative use, there is much that can be said that shows that this also is dubious; the following are not possible, yet correspond to true predicative use.

  • They are wotrh. This machine is worth. It seemed worth.

In my opinion such constructions stem from the oversimplification of longer constructions in which "worth" is the noun, and they have now an idiomatic status in the language.

  • It is of the worth of ten shillings. (most common construction)
  • It is of a worth that compensates the trouble of taking the trip. (figurative)
  • It is of a worth that pays back the trouble of talking to him. (figurative)
  • It is of a worth that pays back the trouble. (figurative)
LPH
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  • "Worth" is not a preposition. "Worth" belongs to the categories noun and adjective: You should assess your net worth (noun) ~ This painting is worth thousands of dollars (adjective). Exceptionally, the adjective takes an NP complement. The OP's example is an adjective because it is predicative in that it relates to a predicand, i.e. "it". – BillJ Dec 25 '22 at 18:45
  • @BillJ Your opinion can be taken into account, certainly, but it is indubitable that this word is a problem; on top of the three references in my answer, there is another one that is not negligible; here is what CoGEL says: "[c] The prepositional status of "worth" is confirmed by the fact that it can govern a noun phrase, a nominal -ing clause with a genitive subject, and a nominal relative clause (but not a that-clause or a to-infinittve clause): San Francisco is worth frequent visits/visiting frequently. _The bicycle is not worth what you paid for it.". (1/2) – LPH Dec 25 '22 at 19:55
  • @BillJ There is an extremely disturbing fact in this akcnowledgement of the word as an adjective in what would be predicative use: it is meaningless without a completing part, whereas it is never question of such a condition for adjectives (they stand alone). (2/2) – LPH Dec 25 '22 at 19:56
  • The adjective "worth" is unusual in that it licenses an NP complement. There are three other adjectives that do that, namely "like, "unlike" and due". Adjectival "worth" also takes gerund-participial (ing) clauses. You really should obtain a copy of CGEL (Huddleston & Pullum). It's vastly superior to any other grammar. As the authors say, it is the specific properties associated with predicative function (it readily combines with "become") that establish that "worth" belongs to the adjective category. – BillJ Dec 26 '22 at 14:40
  • @LPH　(SOED) classifies worth as an adjective, but states that it is usually used with a preposition.　 In the example sentence "It's more headache/trouble than it's worth.", "than it's worth" can be considered a very exceptional true predicate usage of the adjective "value". 　 An extremely exceptional true predicate usage of the adjective "worth" is one that, like common adjectives, does not require a preposition after "value."　And this true predicate usage is not tolerated in general sentences such as "They are worth." but only in idioms, such as the example sentence. Is this correct? – Ran Dec 26 '22 at 15:16
  • @Ran "With prepositional force" does not mean "with a preposition" but rather "in a way that shows that the word acts as a preposition". // "It's more headache/trouble than it's worth.": apparently, one has to conclude that this is a case of true predicative use, but in my opinion this is mere appearance created by an ellipsis. there is a complementing part in the synonymous "It's more trouble than what it's worth.", which is "what". So if this construction is reckoned with as that of an adjective in predicative use, it is still not a case of true predicative use.// (1/3) – LPH Dec 26 '22 at 17:11
  • @Ran No, not "does not require a prep. after 'value'" but does not require a complementing part, whether introduced by a prep. or not. // True as far as I can tell: you can say "They are worthy." but never "They are worth.", this latter being utterly meaningless (not said).//So, as the conclusion in my answer shows I distrust both the adjective and the preposition possibilities and I lean towards an explanation of these constructions as idioms. (2/3) – LPH Dec 26 '22 at 17:11
  • @Ran The fact that you can replace "to be worth" roughly by "to represent" shows to me that there is a good chance that "to be worth" should be analysed as an idiomatic verbal expression. (3/3) – LPH Dec 26 '22 at 17:11
  • If the word relates to a predicand, it's a predicative complement, which is the case with "worth". Note also that when functioning as an adjunct, it must have a predicand, as in "[Worth over a million dollars], the jewels were kept under surveillance by security guards", but not *"[Worth over a million dollars] there will be ample opportunity for a lavish lifestyle". – BillJ Dec 26 '22 at 19:23
  • @LPH The sentence "It's more trouble than it's worth" has the same syntax as "It's more of a dinner than (it's) a meeting."　However, I feel that "it's more trouble than what it's worth." has a different syntax than those sentences.　In the first two sentences, after the "than", there is either one complete clause or a partially omitted clause. And, the subject is the same as that of the main clause. However, in the sentence "it's more trouble than what it's worth.", the "than" is followed by a relative pronoun clause (-what clause).　Can we assume that these three sentences have the same syntax? – Ran Dec 27 '22 at 01:15
  • @Ran In order to say that sentences have the same syntax it is necessary to determine that the corresponding units have the same syntactic function. Place is not all: "John is old" and "John is coming" do not have the same syntax since, "old" and "coming" do not have the same syntactic function; "old" is predicative, "coming" is not, it is part of the verbal form "is coming". Therefore, as long as we don't know the nature of "worth" and what "it's worth" stands for, we can't tell. Neither of the three sentences is a true comparative construction. (1/2) – LPH Dec 27 '22 at 11:55
  • @Ran The first and third could be of the same type (in which (CoGEL) "'than' is followed by an explicit standard or yardstick, normally a noun phrase of measure" — the nominal clause "what it's worth" is equivalent to a noun phrase). The second one is yet of another type that differs from than-constructions followed by a comparative clause. I think it is not right: it should be "It's more a dinner than a meeting.". As a consequence, it seems that the syntax is different; however I fail to understand how this comparison of syntax could help. (2/2) – LPH Dec 27 '22 at 11:56
  • @LPH OK! Thank you so much! – Ran Dec 27 '22 at 12:28
  • @Ran I disagree with your statement that in "it's more trouble than what it's worth , the "than" is followed by a relative pronoun clause (-what clause)" In fact "what it's worth" is a noun phrase in a fused relative construction functioning as complement of the preposition "than". – BillJ Dec 27 '22 at 13:21
  • @BillJ I made a mistake. I meant to say that in the first two cases, "than" is followed by a sentence, but in the last case, a fused relative construction follows, so I wondered if they could be considered the same structure. – Ran Dec 27 '22 at 15:51