Learn English – What does “It wasn’t all romantic” mean

expressionssentence-meaningword-usage

From Steve Jobs' speech, there is a sentence:

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms.

What does "It wasn't all romantic" mean? Does it mean "there is no romance at all", or "partially romantic, partially not"?

Best Answer

First of all, "there is no any romantic at all" is not a grammatical sentence. You could say "there is not any romance at all" or "it is not romantic at all", but you cannot use romantic as a noun in this way (a romantic exists, it is a person who is romantic); also, no any should be not any.

That said, it wasn't all romantic can be understood by shuffling the sentence just a bit:

Not all (of it) was romantic.

So your second guess is the right one: some of it was romantic, some of it was not.

Be aware that romantic in this case has nothing to do with love or sex; romantic refers to an idealised state, a "dream" world. You could read "perfect" or "great" instead of it.

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