Enough and too

UNIT 95 Enough and too

A.   The position of enough: 
Enough goes after adjectives and adverbs:

• He didn't get the job because he wasn't experienced enough. (not enough experienced)

• You won't pass the exam if you don't work hard enough.

• She can't get married yet. She's not old enough.

Enough goes before nouns:

• He didn't get the job because he didn't have enough experience. (not experience enough)

• I'd like to take a vacation, but I don't have enough money.

• some of us had to sit on the floor because there weren't enough chairs.

You can also use enough alone (without a noun):

• I'll lend you some money if you don't have enough.

B.   After enough and too you can say for someone/something:

• I don't have enough money for a vacation.

• He wasn't experienced enough for the job. 

• This shirt is too big for me. I need a smaller size.                       

But we do not usually say "enough/too . . . for doing something." We use the infinitive after enough and too. So we say "enough money to do something old,''  ''enough to do something,'' "too young to do something," etc.:

• I don't have enough money to take a vacation. (not for taking)

• He wasn't experienced enough to do the job.

• She's only sixteen. She's not old enough to get married. (or She's too young to get married.)

• Let's take a taxi. It's too far to walk.

• There weren't enough chairs for everyone to sit down.

• The weather wasn't nice enough to go swimming.

• She spoke too quickly for us to understand.

C.   We say:

• The food was so hot that we couldn't eat it. 

and: The food was very hot. We couldn't eat it.

or we say:

• The food was too hot to eat. (without "it")

Here are some more examples like this:

• That picture is too heavy to hang on the wall

• I had to carry my wallet in my hand. It was too big to put in my pocket.

• The water wasn't clean enough to swim in.