Grammar – Understanding the Phrase ‘Deal 6 Damage’

countabilitygrammar

Hearthstone Fireball Card

I mean, if damage is countable, it should be

Deal 6 damages.

If it’s not countable, then this sentence should be wrong.

Such as saying something like

I drank 5 water.

So… am I missing something here?

Best Answer

It's domain specific, and not something that would be said outside the context of a game like this.

It's almost certainly an elided form of the following:

Deal 6 points of damage.

(And damage here is a mass noun.)

In the same way that headlines take liberties with the omission of articles and other grammatical structures, so too is this game using a shortened form of English that's understood in its own context. (With that font size, it looks like the full sentence might not fit within the space allowed by the card.)

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