The noun adjunct, or why pegasi guards can suck it. · 10:40pm Dec 6th, 2012

Most of y'all are prolly already familiar with adjectives and nouns. Nouns are things like objects, or people, or ideas or whatever (bat, apple, friend, honour, so on and so forth). Adjectives are words that you use to describe nouns (pretty, awkward, formal, stupid). It's pretty simple stuff.

A noun adjunct, which some peeps call "attributive nouns", are pretty much just nouns that you can use to describe other nouns. In a nutshell, they're nouns that you use as adjectives.

For instance, when you have a pornstar fluffer, "fluffer" is the noun there, and "pornstar" is the adjective. Even though "pornstar" is usually used as a noun, you can use it as an adjective to describe the fluffer instead.

Other examples of noun adjuncts:

freedom fries <- "freedom" while not normally an adjective, is being used to modify the word "fries".

mother fucker <- The word "mother" here, specifies exactly what kind of people the fucker is fucking. Alternatively, the fucker could also be a mother who fucks, rather than someone who fucks mothers.

lemon pudding <- A lemon is usually a roundish and yellow fruit, but when combined with the word "pudding", it specifies the flavour. instead.

Noun adjuncts should usually be singular. (There are a few exceptions, like "arms", "customs", "sports", etcetera.) If you're wondering why this is, alls you gotta do is remember how adjectives work. Adjectives don't usually have singular or plural forms, except when used as adjectival nouns*, and when they do, their default form is pretty much singular by default. You don't have blacks hair or fats dogs or smellys socks. You have black hair, fat dogs, and smelly socks. And stop being so fucking lazy, and go do your laundry and take your dog for a walk already.

Most native-speakers will pick up on this rule automatically. Almost all the words in English are pluralized with an "s" or "es", so that means noun adjuncts will automatically sound unnatural when people add an s to the end (unless they're British, because British people are Satan). However, words that are pluralized irregularly, like "goose", "mouse" and, of course, "pegasus" don't get this natural bad grammar knee-jerk reaction. People who aren't aware of this rule will have "mice detectives", "geese families", and the very common "pegasi guards".

Don't do this. They are pegasus guards.

Just like you wouldn't pluralize an adjective, you wouldn't pluralize a noun adjunct. (Unless you're British. And even then, it is only for certain nouns.)

* That's the opposite of a noun adjunct, when an adjective is used as a noun instead (Greys, the good, the bad, the ugly).

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Some helpful links in case you think I am pulling shit out of my ass, and other ones just in general:

Wikipedia

The English Club

Learn English (that's the name of the site; I'm not just being a douche)

English Stack Exchange on when to use a possessive or a noun adjunct.

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