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an Euclid

longnguyen1994

Senior Member
Vietnamese
Even the pictures illustrate only one or two phases of its infinite bizarrerie, endless variety, preternatural massiveness, and utterly alien exoticism. There were geometrical forms for which an Euclid could scarcely find a name—cones of all degrees of irregularity and truncation; terraces of every sort of provocative disproportion; shafts with odd bulbous enlargements; broken columns in curious groups; and five-pointed or five-ridged arrangements of mad grotesqueness.
Context: a man is describing a weird, almost illogical ancient city.

I don't get the "an Euclid" part. Specifically, I don't understand why you would need the article "an". Euclid is the name of a specific man, and there's only one of him, why quantify him as "an Euclid"?

Source: "At the Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft
I suppose the idea is that even someone with Euclid’s skills “in naming mathematical forms” would be unable to classify these forms.

The grammar seems odd, but I think it is a standard thing - to use the proper noun this way to designate a “type” of person.
"An Euclid" = a person who has the skills that Euclid had.
I agree with everybody on the meaning of the article, and with teddy on its form: I'd have written a Euclid.
Personally, I've never heard it with Euclid before but it's common with Einstein. You might call someone "an Einstein", a really smart person -- or the opposite if he's not so bright, "He's no Einstein." He doesn't have the qualities of Einstein as far as intellect. There was only one Einstein and only one Euclid so somebody can't be Einstein or be Euclid but they can be "an Einstein" or "a Euclid" in a way if they have similar abilities.
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