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We all know that there is a sentence "He is a very man". In this sentence I suppose that "very" refers to "man":noun. So in this case, very should be treated as an adjective, isn't it?

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    "He is a very man" doesn't make sense: normally one would say "a very [something] man", e.g., "a very tall man" or "a very strange man".
    – nnnnnn
    Commented May 20, 2020 at 7:57
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    The problem is that we do not "all know that there is a sentence He is a very man. === In fact, "He is a very man". is meaningless and wrong. Do you mean "He is the very man"?
    – Greybeard
    Commented May 20, 2020 at 8:01
  • @Greybeard: It is indeed rare, but it does crop up from time to time. For instance, it occurs in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: "They say he is a very man per se". And googling "a very man" throws up various religious references to Jesus Christ, Job etc.
    – TonyK
    Commented May 20, 2020 at 13:32
  • If people wouldn't try to cram 18 different things into 8 odd-shaped categories, it would be a better world. Once more, questions like "Is Word a Partofspeech?" are hopeless to answer, useless even when answered correctly, and totally confusing. It doesn't matter what you call them; they're gonna behave whatever way they behave, and the devil with the textbook definitions and grammar.
    – John Lawler
    Commented May 20, 2020 at 15:43
  • I see, so it is not a common use and it mostly does not make sense for people, right?
    – Ranger
    Commented May 21, 2020 at 7:16

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“Very” is sometimes (infrequently) used as an adjective. A dictionary should cover this. But “He is a very man” is not a common or normal-sounding sentence. Are you sure you’re not misremembering “He’s the very man (for __)”?

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  • Sorry, I am not sure, because I saw the sentence in a movie.
    – Ranger
    Commented May 21, 2020 at 7:15
  • If you saw it in a movie, it must have been in the subtitles, and subtitles are not a place where one should look for examples of English.
    – John Lawler
    Commented May 21, 2020 at 15:19

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