a quality person?
- Thread starter caireo
- Start date
Hello Caireo. Yes, it certainly makes sense, and I'm 99.8% certain I've heard people use quality [adj.] + person.
Now whether or not it's recommendable to use it in, for example, a formal essay, is an entirely different question ...
Now whether or not it's recommendable to use it in, for example, a formal essay, is an entirely different question ...
A "quality person" sounds a bit odd to me, and I wouldn't personally use it.
However, I daresay that it might possibly be obvious from some suitable context that that's what it meant.
I don't think I've ever seen "quality" used like that, although I'd agree that the meaning is fairly easy to deduce. I'd expect to see something like "genuine" in that context, but I daresay it might work for other people.
Quality person sounds odd to me too. I suspect the fault lies more in the noun person than the adjective quality, though. Quality service, quality teachers, quality meat, quality films, quality newspapers ~ all these sound (more or less) fine to me because it's fairly easy to quantify the quality of those things. Persons are such vague things, though ... especially ones that lack qualities
In the eighteenth century one may have said "A lady of quality" meaning that she was of the gentry. I think this was an imitation of "une dame de qualité". Now one is more likely to say "it is a tennis racquet of quality". Both of these intend to praise the person or thing described. However if one thinks about it everything has its own quality which may be good, bad or indifferent. An object of no value whatsoever would still have its own quality.