Thread: Confusing as hell sentence!

"внушающая ужас" = horror-inspiring. The figure was giant, horror-inspiring, and obscure

so what part does the word ужас play in this, is it sort of an "Add-adjective???" haha. It is very strange to me.

Originally Posted by ShakeyX

so what part does the word ужас play in this, is it sort of an "Add-adjective???" haha. It is very strange to me.

The structure is relatively straightforward
horror, terror = ужас
to inspire horror = внушать ужас
Now we transform that into participle in order to make it possible to use this as we would use an adjective:
horror-inspiring = внушающий ужас (note that adjectival participles have the same endings as adjectives and are subject to the same rules of agreement)

giant figure/ enormous figure = гигантская фигура
Therefore, "an enormous horror-inspiring figure" becomes "гигантская, внушающая ужас фигура" – and "a dark, enormous, horror-inspiring figure of some scary monster" is "гигантская, внушающая ужас тёмная фигура какого-то страшного монстра"

And, just as in English, to make some sentences less mind-blowing, Russian tends to use "that"-clauses instead of participles in a more colloquial speech. Like "a giant dark and heavy figure that inspired with awe" rather than "a giant awe inspiring dark and heavy figure". In Russian even more so, as participles are mainly characteristic of written speech. Children are actually taught their usage at school, exactly because one is extremely unlikely to catch on adjectival and adverbal participles just through communication with pals. Even after some education, many people make mistakes such as "Having searched through forests for two weeks, a corpse was all but eaten"