Today on the drive home on the van, we had a rambling discussion about postfix adjectives. These are the things with the noun in front, that sound wrong when pluralized. Examples are:
Attorney General (Attorny General)
Court Martial (Courts Martial)
Surgeon General (Surgeons General)
Mother-in-Law (Mothers-in-Law)
Attorney-at-Law (Attorneys-at-Law)
The only postfix adjectives we could think of were: general, martial, in-law, at-law, d’art. We were unsure if there were others, or if there was a proper term for the part of speech. We also couldn’t figure out why there is a hyphen between the noun and “at-law” or “in-law”, but not for the other postfix adjectives.
We also noted that although in-law and at-law are postfix adjectives, outlaw is not. This led to a question regarding ellipticcurve‘s sister C, who has passed the bar. C’s husband, D, has a brother J. If C did something illegal (such as littering) and left the state, from J’s point of view, would she be an attorney-at-law in-law outlaw?
We decided that (a) this is likely the fault of the French, who brought us Objects d’Art, and (b) it was a case for a forensic etymoligist. By the way, is there any connection between a forensic etymologist and a grammar nazi?
