I have a problem with the interpretation of this sentence.
Fat cannot change into muscle any more than muscle can change into
fat.
I guess that it would mean either 1 or 2 below.
-
The change from muscle to fat is more likely to happen than the change from fat to muscle. (This implies that fat can change into muscle even a little.)
-
Fat cannot change into muscle, and muscle cannot change into fat either
Is either one of these correct? If so, which one? If not, what is the right interpretation?
Best Answer
It means something close to your option (2): Fat can’t change into muscle, just like (as you may already know) muscle can’t change into fat. Regardless of its scientific correctness, this is the meaning that the phrasing implies.
Generally, phrases like “Eagles cannot swim any more than sharks can fly” are an idiomatic construction. They essentially always mean Eagles can’t swim, just like (as you may already know) sharks can’t fly — or in more detail:
This phrasing is always used to express impossibility/unlikeliness like this — it does not just mean “ability of eagles to swim ≤ ability of sharks to fly”, as a literal logical reading would entail. For instance, one would never naturally say or write the following, even though strictly logically they’re true:
And slightly more subtly, the first impossibility is the main new information being asserted, while the second one is typically presumed as background knowledge; so one would not say
because although both of these are impossible, readers can be assumed to know the first impossibility more than the second.