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How about a burger?

Delicious, but healthy?

Is the proper interpretation of the second phrase ("Delicious, but healthy?") what follows below?

  • The part that comes before the comma should be interpreted as an affirmation stating that the burger is delicious, and the part that comes after the comma should raise the curiosity of the reader about how healthy the burger is.
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  • I don't know what you think constitutes "a phrase", but Delicious, but health in your example doesn't really qualify. It's just three consecutive words with a fairly obvious semantic significance, but there's nothing "grammatical" about it.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 16:59
  • Thank you for the info. What should be the correct classification of the second part?
    – sam_dw
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 17:06
  • As I said, your actual three words don't represent a "sentence" that can meaningfully be "analysed" along grammatical lines (even after changing health to healthy). But in more general terms, in something like "Kinky sex is naughty but nice" I would simply say the last two words are a caveat (I neither know nor care if they also fall into a special "grammatical" category).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 17:39

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I would take the question mark at the end of the second sentence to indicate that the entire statement is being queried. So my interpretation would be that it means:

How about a burger? Is a burger a delicious-but-healthy meal?

If you wanted it to mean the the burger was definitely delicious, but wanted to ask if it was healthy, I would write it as:

How about a burger? Delicious. But healthy?

Neither are formally correct English, but perfectly fine in informal use. A formally correct sentence would be:

How about a burger? That would be delicious. But would it be healthy?

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  • thank you for informing the typing mistake. I corrected the word healthy by adding the missing y.
    – sam_dw
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 17:09
  • Short, but sweet. Nice answer.
    – shane
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 17:30
  • @DJClayworth - Just did. I corrected the second and third instances of the word.
    – sam_dw
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 17:32
  • @DJClayworth - Please Clayworth, could you show an example of the content restructured as formally correct English? Thanks. :)
    – sam_dw
    Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 18:36
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How about a burger? Delicious, but healthy?

I would consider the expression "Delicious, but healthy?" to be casual style in today's standard English. And that, yes, your interpretation is what was probably intended.

LONG ANSWER: How that expression "Delicious, but healthy?" should be interpreted probably depends on how it was said. I can see one very likely possibility, and maybe another possibility:

  • 1.) Delicious! But healthy?

  • 2.) Delicious? But healthy?

And each version would be said differently (w.r.t. intonation) by the speaker.

I would guess that the speaker most likely meant for the #1 version. And so, the rest of my post will be on that.

I'm seeing your original version to be an ellipted version of:

  • It is delicious, but is it healthy?

Which is a coordination of two main clauses (with the coordinator "but"). For purposes of analyzing the ellipsis, we can split the coordination up so that it is two separate sentences. And then, we can ellipt out the leading pronoun "it" and the auxiliary verb "is" because "personal pronouns and auxiliaries, can be omitted from the beginning of a main clause in casual style." (CGEL, page 1540)

  • It is delicious. But is it healthy?

  • Delicious. But healthy?

And so, we can then get your original version by reconnecting them together again:

  • Delicious, but healthy?

Here is a link to a post that discusses this kind of ellipsis and which also includes excerpts from CGEL: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/160937/57102

Note that CGEL is the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL).

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