Please see this English text…
*August was the hottest month by far, but, even though **they *might have been expected to rise , ice cream sales sharply declined.
I marked red in the above which I don’t understand the meaning .
what does by far means ? is it , by far == very far ?
what does **they ** mean here ?
by far = compared to other months
they = whomever keeps track of ice cream sales
but its written “expected to rise” …rise of what ? hotness ?
By far = far and beyond the records set by other months
They = individual sales of ice cream, the number of which could have been expected to increase because of the extreme heat
by far = by a value much higher than any of the other month’s temeperatures
they = ice cream sales
Those are very much helpful. I understand now. Thanks for your time.
Rewritten, but with the same (or at least similar) meaning:
“August was much, much hotter than any other month. In spite of this, and contrary to expectations, ice cream sales took a nosedive.”
Since August is in winter, by far would mean “not”, and would also explain the ice cream sales 
“They” would not mean “whomever” in any case (“they” is to “who” as “them” is to “whom”).
“They” are “ice cream sales”, that were expected to rise but didn’t.
“Although August was far hotter than other months, ice cream sales (which might have been expected to rise) sharply declined.”
panache45, do you really expect someone like themajestic, who obviously is not a great speaker and reader of English, to understand the colloquial meaning of “nosedive”?
themajestic, I’m happy that you’re working so hard to learn to read English. If you have to ask about a lot of sentences like that (and it’s not really an extremely difficult sentence), then you’re going to be starting a lot of threads. I hope you have bought a really good, large dictionary of English.
The sentence quoted in the OP is poorly constructed. The “they” in it refers to “ice cream sales” which doesn’t appear until later in the sentence. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is ungrammatical (it is occasionally a good rhetorical device, when used carefully), used in a sentence of this kind it is just bad writing.
The claim itself surprises me. In my experience, the hottest period of the summer (in the northern hemisphere, wiseguy Cugel) comes around the third week of July and by late August things have cooled considerably.
One could argue that “The old man the boat,” isn’t a particularly difficult sentence, since it uses common words and has a straightforward construction, but I could easily imagine someone in the process of learning English to be mystified by it.
Well, weather patterns and climate are hardly uniform across the entire hemisphere, and the sentence appears to be referring to a particular August in a particular place, rather than Augusts in general. As a Briton, used to our unpredictable weather, August being the hottest (or driest, or wettest, or windiest, etc) month of any specific year wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Besides which, the passage quoted has something of the flavour of an exercise from a textbook for those learning English as a second language (particularly taken in the context of themajestic’s other threads). So I suspect that the content is rather less important than the grammar, in this case.
I would say that if someone is mystified by an sentence, then by definition it is a particularly difficult sentence for them.
It’s extremely sloppy, when I first read it I got a different meaning because of the word THEY
Here’s the original:
August was the hottest month by far, but, even though they might have been expected to rise , ice cream sales sharply declined
Because the word THEY comes first, and they is usually only used AFTER what it is refering to, I took they meaning to relate to August being hot.
August was the hottest month by far. But even though the tempratures (they) might have been expected to rise, sales of ice cream declined.
This is how I first read it. And I think you could argue the point. Though I would agree it makes more sense to assgin they to the sales end of the sentence, the fact you could argue the point, makes the sentence, sloppy and needing to be rewritten.
Anytime there are two meanings you need to rewrite so it is clear. That is the whole point of grammar.
I don’t think you can argue that point with the sentence out of context. ‘Temperatures’ doesn’t appear anywhere, so just because there is some mention of August being hot, doesn’t mean you can manufacture a noun for ‘they’ to refer to.
I agree that it’s confusing precisely because ‘they’ comes in a position where you might have expected the referent to have already appeared, but I don’t see any other meaning than ‘ice cream sales’ as given.
It would be more clearly ambiguous in context:
Everyone knows the best way to distract a zombie is by spraying it with ice cream, and when those zombies start coming, you’d better keep your freezer well-stocked. It’s also common knowledge that zombie outbreaks are more likely to occur when the heat of summer causes them to rise from their graves. This year something unusual happened with the zombies. August was the hottest month by far, but, even though they might have been expected to rise, ice cream sales sharply declined.