Is it normal to use "suffer from" for subjects other than humans? For example is it acceptable to say: "this old building suffer from irregular electricity"
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3Yes, that's fine. Figurative and metaphorical speech is commonplace in English.– Dan BronCommented Nov 30, 2014 at 1:20
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1Certainly it would not be at all unusual in the US to hear someone says that a building is "suffering from neglect". "Suffering from irregular electricity", on the other hand, is a little "odd". I haven't thought through a bunch of examples, but I'm guessing that to "suffer", an inanimate object needs to be the subject of neglect, abuse, overuse, etc -- things that are the result of human interaction (or the lack thereof).– Hot LicksCommented Nov 30, 2014 at 2:17
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It would certainly be normal to use "suffer from" in a bit of fiction featuring anthropomorphism, say in stories from the Thomas the Tank (R) series, where the various characters are portrayed as having a variety of human emotions, and other characteristics. The Thomas stories are by no means the only ones; there are countless other examples.– brasshatCommented Nov 30, 2014 at 3:21
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It should be "this old building sufferS from irregular electricity".– Hot LicksCommented Apr 23, 2015 at 22:04
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Or 'these old buildings suffer'.– MazuraCommented Apr 23, 2015 at 23:06
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2 Answers
People often connect suffer with human privation, in part perhaps because of its longtime pairing with pain in the legal phrase "pain and suffering." The first meaning that Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) reports for suffer as a transitive verb is
to submit to or be forced to endure {suffer martyrdom}
and the second and third definitions it gives for suffer as an intransitive verb are
2 : to sustain loss or damage 3 : to be subject to disability or handicap
Nothing in the plain terms of these definition requires the sufferer to be human or, indeed, alive at all. The emphasis is on enduring something damaging or otherwise undesirable, not on feeling pain or unpleasant emotions. It follows that "The lunar landscape has suffered numerous impacts from meteorites" and "The election suffered from various vote-counting irregularities," and "This old building suffers from irregular electricity" use suffer in well-established ways.
answered Apr 23, 2015 at 21:41
It would be more in keeping with the personification of the building in question to say that the plumbing was irregular. The electricity would more likely suffer epileptic fits.
