Many are the + NOUN + RELATIVE CLAUSE – English Grammar Profiler

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In the English Grammar Profile, C2 point 117 in the category of PRONOUNS/quantity is defined as:

complex noun phrases using an inverted form ‘Many’ + ‘are’ + noun phrase, followed by a relative clause, as a focusing device.

FOR EXAMPLE:

*We can’t find much meaningful data in corpora for this rare grammar structure because of the length of allowed searches.

The most we can find in the iWeb corpus is:

1 . MANY ARE THE TIMES 23 2 . MANY ARE THE AFFLICTIONS 12

3 . MANY ARE THE RESULT 11

Here are two examples from COCA:

  • Many are the times that I have sat in abject pain with a purple face just to see our boys through.
  • Many are the reasons which may induce believers to seek it…

*This is a type of literary inversion of the normal order of the elements of a sentence.  Usually, we would write:

I have sat in pain many times.  

or

There are many times that I sat in pain.

*It is possible to follow this structure with a time clause too.  For example:

Many are the times when I pick up an instrument 

and play and think that it just doesn’t sound like it did yesterday, 

or like it did 30 minutes ago.

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