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Unread Nov 20th, 2010, 02:40 am
susan53 susan53 is offline
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Default Re: "Somebody is agreed on..." and "Somebody agrees on..."

The meaning is exactly the same.

- All the experts were agreed on one point. "agreed" = adjective, meaning "in agreement". You could also say : All the experts were in agreement on one point.

It's a strange use of the adjective because normally we expect a participle adjective to have passive meaning -as in eg They were tired/surprised/bored/interested etc where the meaning is Something tired/surprised/bored/interested them. But with "agreed" the meaning is active, making it a direct parallel with the verb in ...

- All the experts agreed on one point. "agreed" = past verb

I've been trying to think of another example where a participle adjective has an active meaning like this, but can't off-hand. Anybody?
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