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I came across this sentence:

"That was the year the Twilight movie was going to come out, and the kids were agog with all things vampire." — Shelley Dorrill (From Merriam-Webster's definition of 1.Agog)

I did quick search and this quote apparently comes from an interview with the author Shelley Dorrill.

Since vampire is a noun this sentence struck me as incorrect. I would have expected "the kids were agog with all things vampire-like/vampire-related" or, more so, "the kids were agog with all vampire-like/vampire-related things".

Was the interview setting that allowed for a laxer interaction (but then, why did MW dictionary choose to put this as a paradigmatic sentence?) or is it indeed grammatically correct?

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  • Why do you dislike it? Would you accept "with all vampire things"?
    – Stuart F
    Jul 31, 2022 at 18:40
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    @StuartF it sounds weird to me the ([noun] + "things") or the ("things" + [noun]) constructions. I would expect an adjective instead of a noun in this case.
    – q0mlm
    Jul 31, 2022 at 18:54
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    Closely related, though they take the grammaticalness as a given: What does "All things X" mean?; "princess of all things shoes" what does this phrase mean?
    – Michael Seifert
    Jul 31, 2022 at 18:59
  • It's using "vampire" as an abbreviation for "related to vampires"
    – Barmar
    Aug 1, 2022 at 22:13
  • There is nothing wrong with 'all things vampire.' If there was a doubt there, I suggest it would be using 'agog with' rather than 'agog at…'
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Sep 2, 2022 at 23:10

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