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He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill of silence of the crypt. (A Game of Thrones)

I think he should have put breathing deeply instead of breathed deep, for two reasons:

  • first, there is no adjective for the word breathe

  • second, breathe should be followed by adverb deeply not an adjective deep.

I want to know how this sentence works. How do you explain this condition?

J.R.
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Bavyan Yaldo
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    Deep functions as an adverb, and adjective, and a noun. What English dictionary did you consult to learn about the word deep? Breathe deep is an example of a verb-adjective combination, which are not uncommon in English. An outfielder in baseball also plays deep. Water can run cold, but not "coldly". See the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary entry for deep. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 26 '17 at 21:57
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    Possible duplicate of Is "deep" an adjective or adverb? – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 26 '17 at 22:06
  • I check this word up and figured out that it functions as adverb, too. – Bavyan Yaldo Jun 26 '17 at 22:18
  • What about *breathed*, why did not the writer use breathing instead of breathed? – Bavyan Yaldo Jun 26 '17 at 22:19
  • Agree with P.E. Dant There are many other instances of an adjective plus noun like this in English and I'm too lazy to dig them up. /he breathed deep/ means it was only once. Oh, I just remember another one: to think long and hard. – Lambie Jun 26 '17 at 22:34
  • I'm thinking maybe this is not a duplicate. The other question is about "burying something deep", where deep can be understood as the result (a subject complement), hence it's easy to see why an adjective makes sense. With "breathe deep", that explanation doesn't seem to make sense. IOW, I can explain the other one, but I'm not sure how to explain this one—so they must not be duplicates! :) – Ben Kovitz Jun 26 '17 at 22:41
  • @BenKovitz I'd start to explain it by suggesting a dictionary entry like Cambridge, M-W Learners, Macmillan, ... etc. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 26 '17 at 22:49
  • The writer chose the participle instead of the -ing form because the participle looked is used in the first clause. The subject of breathed in the second clause is He from the first clause; He breathing doesn't make much sense in English. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 26 '17 at 22:56
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    @P.E.Dant I'm hoping for something, er, deeper than "A dictionary says that deep is an adverb" or "M-W Learners says breathe deep is OK." Not that you're suggesting that, but I don't see an explanation in any of those dictionaries. Many words serve more comfortably as adverbs in some contexts than others, and I think usually there are reasons why which are enlightening to know. – Ben Kovitz Jun 26 '17 at 22:56
  • I think @Lambie's got an interesting hypothesis here: "Eddie breathed deep" suggests one deep breath; "Eddie breathed deeply" is equally compatible with one breath or many. For once I'm not cringing to see an answer posted as a comment. And it pretty well shows that this question is not a duplicate. – Ben Kovitz Jun 26 '17 at 23:05
  • @P. E. Dant what is the meaning of breathed here? Are the stones breathed? Do the stones breathe. How could just that happen unless it is a metaphorical expression. – Bavyan Yaldo Jun 26 '17 at 23:12
  • @BavyanYaldo It appears to me that you've asked a hard question. It may take a few days for a good answer, known with confidence, to emerge from discussion and debate. There's a lesson to be learned from that: English grammar is so chaotic, often even the native speakers can't explain it (at least not without a lot of thought). – Ben Kovitz Jun 26 '17 at 23:17
  • @BenKovitz Sometimes the explanation is "because we do it this way in English." I think that's why the usages are provided in many dictionaries with no explanation, any more than the entry for cold explains "why" it's an adjective. We breathe deep, run cold, stand straight, laugh loud. OALD sez: "The adverbs deep and deeply can both mean ‘a long way down or into something’. Deep can only mean this and is more common than deeply in this sense." – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 26 '17 at 23:43
  • @BavyanYaldo Again: it is not the stones that breathed. The subject of the verb breathe in the second clause is He, not the stone figures. The second clause is: "[He] breathed deep in the chill of silence of the crypt." – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 26 '17 at 23:50
  • @P.E.Dant I agree: sometimes there is no explanation other than a specific custom for a specific word. Ultimately, of course, language is nothing but custom. In the case of "breathe deep", though, I think something interesting is waiting to be pointed out, though of course I could easily be wrong. Sometimes there are subtle ways that one custom echoes another, which people exploit to communicate, and it can help to be clued into them. IOW, please keep thinking about this! You might hit on something. – Ben Kovitz Jun 27 '17 at 00:14
  • @P. E. Dant so if the subject is He, why the writer didn't even put and after comma. To ensure someone that breathed referees to He not the stones. And i have a question relating to this case: a gang broke into a bank, tried or trying to rob it. What is the difference between these sentences? And whuch one is right tried or trying? – Bavyan Yaldo Jun 27 '17 at 08:41
  • Sometimes in English, a writer will just not use a compound sentence: He looked at the stone figures all around them [and] breathed deep etc. OR: He looked at the stone figures all around them; he breathed deep. It's just this writer's quirk. It's acceptable in a script. – Lambie Jun 27 '17 at 21:22
  • Either of these is fine: "A gang broke into a bank and tried to rob it." ... or ... "A gang broke into a bank, trying to rob it." Also, a writer could write "A gang broke into a bank, tried to rob it." This would be immediately and easuily understood by any English speaker. The Game of Thrones writer was not writing a grammar lesson. He was writing creatively. There is no "right" or "wrong" involved. No English speaker would take his sentence to mean that the stones were breathing. It doesn't make sense, and that's not what the sentence expresses. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jun 27 '17 at 22:21

2 Answers2

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To "breathe deep" is a common idiom, meaning to fully absorb the atmosphere or flavor of a place/event/situation, as well as just to take a deep breath (for instance to calm yourself). Your example is using it in the sense of absorb and connect with the atmosphere. Collins Cobuild has some examples, e.g.

Stand still, breathe deep and you can hear it in your deep heart's core.

I stand on my balcony and breathe deep.

The first here is about breathing deep in the sense of absorbing and connecting with the place or situation and feeling it in your heart - it's more than just a literal deep breath.

For the English learner, there are three issues with Martin's sentence: punctuation; "breathed" vs "breathing"; and "deep" vs "deeply".

"Breathed" here is a simple past tense; it would be more standard to have "and" than a comma before it ("He looked at the stone figures all around them and breathed deep...") but this is literature so you can punctuate how you choose. Here the use of a comma indicates things happening more closely together or at the same time, while "and" might imply things happening one after another.

One difference between "breathed" and "breathing" is that "breathing" implies continuing action, while "breathed" could refer to taking a single breath; "breathing deep" might imply panting.

As to "deep" vs "deeply", both are valid adverbs. English has many pairs like this where something can be an adverb with or without "ly", e.g. quick/quickly. In the idiom "breathe deep", "deep" is common. In other contexts, "deeply" might be more common, e.g. "I love you deeply." But "breathed deeply" would not be wrong - just longer.

In summary it's a combination of a common idiom meaning "to absorb the atmosphere of a place", with simple past tense for completed action, and a comma for speed.

Stuart F
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Grammatically, you're correct, but the author here is using breathed deep in a poetic way. Some surrounding text is as follows:

For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This was his place, here in the north. He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all listening, he knew. And winter was coming.

This paragraph is describing the crypt, and the phrase "breathed deep" is describing the stone figures, not Eddard Stark's actions. This particular usage is very unusual even for a native speaker, and is done this way intentionally so, to add to the mental imagery that the author is attempting to convey. It helps to understand if you swap "breathed" for "buried", though it loses some of the unusual nuance.

As for using "deep" versus "deeply", that too is a creative choice. "Deeply" is what the reader (and typical grammar) would expect if "deeply" were in reference to Eddard Stark's actions, but by breaking out of expectations with use of "breathed" to account for their presence in the crypt, and following it with "deep", it serves to adjust the purpose of deep/deeply from their depth in the crypt, to how they were breathed into it.

Nathan Young
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