---
title: "Two bricks shy of a load" means stupid or a bit mad; it is American… — Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madnes… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Two bricks shy of a load" means stupid or a bit mad; it is American and humorous. Who acts: bricks shy, shy. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness and rudeness and swearing» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the prag
---

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# Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness and rudeness and swearing, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Two bricks shy of a load" means stupid or a bit mad; it is American and humorous.

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**Who acts:** bricks shy, shy · **What happens:** mean, be · **To what, where:** stupid

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness and rudeness and swearing» 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 (bricks shy, shy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:037-bats-and-gosh.lesson:13
# text = "Two bricks shy of a load" means stupid or a bit mad; it is American and humorous.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 037-bats-and-gosh.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
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	Two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	3	nummod	_	_
3	bricks	brick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	compound	_	_
4	shy	shy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	load	load	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:nmod
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	stupid	stupid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	obj	_	_
11	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl:unmarked	_	_
14	mad	mad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	_
15	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	American	American	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=9:conj
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	humorous	humorous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	conj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | bricks shy | stupid |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stupid=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | present | shy |  |  |  |  | american *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | shy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

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**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:037-bats-and-gosh.lesson:13`.

**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. **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/).

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- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: stupidity…, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/37-bats-and-gosh/12/)
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