Learn English – Breathed deep vs. breathing deeply

grammargrammaticality-in-contextmeaning-in-contextsubordinate-clauses

He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill of silence of the crypt. (A Game of Thrones)

I think he should have put breathing deeply instead of breathed deep, for two reasons:

  • first, there is no adjective for the word breathe

  • second, breathe should be followed by adverb deeply not an adjective deep.

I want to know how this sentence works. How do you explain this condition?

Best Answer

Grammatically, you're correct, but the author here is using breathed deep in a poetic way. Some surrounding text is as follows:

For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This was his place, here in the north. He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all listening, he knew. And winter was coming.

This paragraph is describing the crypt, and the phrase "breathed deep" is describing the stone figures, not Eddard Stark's actions. This particular usage is very unusual even for a native speaker, and is done this way intentionally so, to add to the mental imagery that the author is attempting to convey. It helps to understand if you swap "breathed" for "buried", though it loses some of the unusual nuance.

As for using "deep" versus "deeply", that too is a creative choice. "Deeply" is what the reader (and typical grammar) would expect if "deeply" were in reference to Eddard Stark's actions, but by breaking out of expectations with use of "breathed" to account for their presence in the crypt, and following it with "deep", it serves to adjust the purpose of deep/deeply from their depth in the crypt, to how they were breathed into it.

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