Guide Exercises

Introduction

"Try as he might, he couldn't open the jar." "Tired as I was, I kept going." These sentences both mean "although" — but neither one uses the word "although" at all. Instead, they front the very word that carries the contrast — the effort, the tiredness — and let "as" quietly do the concessive work from a completely different position in the sentence.

Here's the twist that makes this genuinely worth a C2 page: "as" on its own isn't concessive at all. "As he was tired, he went to bed" means "because he was tired" — a totally different, ordinary, everyday use of "as." The concessive, "although" meaning only shows up once you front the adjective, verb, or noun in front of "as." Miss that detail, and you'll either misread a sentence or write one that doesn't say what you think it says.

The Core Forms

Pattern 1 — Adjective (or adverb) + as + subject + verb

Tired as I was, I kept driving through the night.
Strange as it may sound, the plan actually worked.
Much as I love this city, I couldn't afford to stay.

A very common variant doubles "as," putting one before the adjective and one after — especially frequent in American English:

As tired as I was, I kept driving through the night.
As strange as it may sound, the plan actually worked.

Pattern 2 — Bare verb + as + subject + modal/auxiliary

Try as he might, he couldn't open the jar.
Search as they would, the detectives found no fingerprints.
Argue as she may, I'm not changing my mind.

Pattern 3 — Predicate noun + as (or that) + subject + verb

Fool as I was, I trusted him completely.
Coward as he was, he still tried to defend his friend.

For this noun-fronting pattern specifically, "that" can stand in for "as" with no change in meaning:

Fool that I was, I trusted him completely.

The Real Rule: Why This Doesn't Generalize

1

The concessive ("although") meaning comes specifically from the fronting itself. Without it, "as" defaults to a causal or circumstantial meaning — roughly "because" or "while." "As he was tired, he went to bed" simply means he was tired, so he went to bed; it takes fronting the adjective — "Tired as he was, he went to bed" — to flip the meaning to "although he was tired."

2

Despite the name "inversion," the clause after the fronted element keeps completely normal subject-verb order. This is genuinely different from patterns like "Never have I seen..." or "Not only did she...," where the subject and auxiliary swap places. Here, the only thing that moves is the adjective, verb, or noun itself — "Tired as I was" keeps "I was" in its ordinary order and never becomes "Tired as was I."

3

Pattern 2 (verb-fronting) needs a modal or auxiliary — might, may, would, will, does/did — to hold up the second half of the clause. Adjective-fronting and noun-fronting don't have this requirement; an ordinary form of "be" is enough. "Try as he might" needs "might"; "Tired as he was" just needs "was."

4

Only specific word types can be fronted this way: adjectives, adverbs, bare (uninflected) verbs, and predicate nouns. You can't front a whole verb phrase with its object still attached, and the fronted verb in Pattern 2 must stay in its bare form — "Tries as he might" doesn't work; it has to be "Try as he might."

5

"That" as a substitute for "as" is restricted to the noun-fronting pattern (Pattern 3) — it doesn't extend to fronted adjectives or verbs. "Tired that I was" isn't a recognized form; only "Tired as I was" works there.

6

This whole construction is most at home with adjectives describing a state or quality (tired, strange, clever, promising) and verbs of effort or attempt (try, search, argue, plead). It's a fairly fixed, literary frame rather than a fully open, generative pattern — stretching it onto an unusual word can sound forced even when nothing in the mechanical rule technically blocks it.

Common Errors

Error 1 — Forgetting that concession requires fronting.

✗ As he tried very hard, he couldn't fix the printer. (reads as causal, "because he tried hard")
✓ Try as he might, he couldn't fix the printer.

Error 2 — Leaving out the modal in verb-fronting.

✗ Try as he, he couldn't fix the printer.
✓ Try as he might, he couldn't fix the printer.

Error 3 — Inflecting the fronted verb.

✗ Tries as he might, he can't fix the printer.
✓ Try as he might, he can't fix the printer.

Error 4 — Using "that" with a fronted adjective.

✗ Tired that I was, I kept driving.
✓ Tired as I was, I kept driving.

Error 5 — Inverting the subject and verb after "as."

✗ Fool as was he, he trusted the con artist.
✓ Fool as he was, he trusted the con artist.

Register and Usage

This whole family of structures leans formal and literary — you'll meet it in careful prose, essays, and elevated rhetoric more than in casual conversation. That said, the verb-fronting pattern ("Try as I might," "Search as they would") has drifted further into everyday idiomatic use than the others; "try as I might" in particular is common enough to feel like a fixed phrase even in ordinary speech. Adjective-fronting and noun-fronting ("Tired as I was," "Fool that I was") still read as distinctly formal or literary choices.

Don't Confuse This With: Concessive "Though"

"As" and "though" can both build this exact fronted structure, and they often produce sentences that mean the same thing — but they don't behave identically. "Though" is concessive whether it's fronted or not: "Though he was tired, he kept going" and "Tired though he was, he kept going" both mean "although he was tired." "As," on the other hand, is ONLY concessive in the fronted form — unfronted, it defaults to its ordinary causal meaning. So while "Tired as he was" and "Tired though he was" mean the same thing, "As he was tired" and "Though he was tired" do not: the first means "because," the second still means "although."

The full-clause version of "much as" ("Much as I love this city...") lives on this page as Pattern 1's adverb-fronting variant — its elliptical cousin, where the repeated verb after "to" gets dropped entirely ("Much as we'd love to, we can't stay"), is covered on Concession with "For All" and "With All".

Exercises

EXERCISE:

Exercise 1 — Transformation

Rewrite each sentence using the concessive fronting pattern indicated in brackets.

1. Although he tried very hard, he couldn't lift the box. [verb-fronting] →
2. Although she was exhausted, she finished the marathon. [adjective-fronting] →
3. Although it may sound strange, the theory turned out to be correct. [as...as variant] →
4. Although he was a liar, most people still trusted him completely. [noun-fronting] →
5. Although he protested loudly, the umpire's decision stood. [verb-fronting] →
6. Although the results were promising, investors remained cautious. [adjective-fronting] →
7. Although I admire her a great deal, I don't agree with her methods. [adverb-fronting with "much"] →
8. Although he argued passionately, the committee rejected his proposal. [verb-fronting] →