---
title: "Not the quickest" is a polite way of saying not very clever. — Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Not the quickest" is a polite way of saying not very clever. Who acts: quickest, polite way. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes and stupidity and madness» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every c
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/22/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: failure an…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/) / 22

# Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes and stupidity and madness, sentence 22

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Not the quickest" is a polite way of saying not very clever.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** quickest, polite way · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** polite way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes and stupidity and madness» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (quickest, polite way), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:035-mistakes-and-stupidity.lesson:22
# text = "Not the quickest" is a polite way of saying not very clever.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 035-mistakes-and-stupidity.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	quickest	quick	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	9	nsubj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=4:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:``:_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
10	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=11:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
11	saying	say	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=9:nmod
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
13	very	very	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	clever	clever	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	xcomp	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: changed act=assert

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | the quickest | a polite way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | a polite way *not said here* |  |  |  |  | clever *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:euphemisms:035-mistakes-and-stupidity.lesson:22`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: failure an…, 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/21/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: failure an…, 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/23/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/)