Nouns as Adjectives

Why is it that so many people are fond of using nouns as adjectives? I think it is probably due to laziness in relation to the correct use of punctuation - usually a missing apostrophe or hyphen. For example, people who work in education often talk about ‘the learner experience’. What do they mean?

They probably wish to express the meaning “the experience (or experiences) that one or more learners is/are exposed to” - in which case, they should probably write one or other of the following expressions:

the learner’s experience (for a single learner having a single experience)
the learner’s experiences (for a single learner having multiple experiences)

the learners’ experience (for a group of learners having a single experience)
the learners’ experiences (for a group of learner having multiple experiences)

On the other hand, we could talk about the ‘learner-experience’ as a single experience that one or more learners are exposed to. The plural form of this composite would now be ‘learner-experiences’ - this would describe multiple experiences that one or more learners have. The problem with this composite is that it does not give any indication of the number of learners involved - one or many? It is interesting to speculate on whether four forms of the composite are needed in order to cover each of the possibilities listed above: (1) learner-experience, (2) learner-experiences, (3) learners-experience and (4) learners-experiences. Interesting!

Gruntled and Disgruntled

I was having a telephone conversation with a friend and we got to tallking about the word 'gruntle'. She looked it up in her dictionary and told me that the verb 'to gruntle' means "to grumble, murmour or complain" and that its origin goes back to 1589 (page 839 in Volume 1 of the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary, 3rd Edition, 1979). I looked up the word in my Collins English Dictionary (page 648, 1979) where I found the adjective 'gruntled' along with the definition "happy or contended; satisfied". In order to resolve this apparent inconsistency in meaning, I turned to Wiktionary where I found the following statement: "Gruntle is today considered obsolete and is not in normal usage. Gruntled is used only humorously as the imagined opposite of disgruntled" - see here. Apparently, the word 'disgruntled' is of American origin; it therefore appears that 'gruntle' left the UK. went to America and had its meaning changed!

I wonder if 'disappointment' is the opposite of 'appointment'?

---

Dead, Solid and Brittle

Here are three interesting sentences:

(1) He was dead.
(2) The water was frozen solid.
(3) Her bones were brittle.

Each of the words denoted by italic script is used in an adjectival sense. Two of the words (dead and solid) have corresponding verbs to describe the related process; that is, 'to die' describes the process of passing from a live state into that of being dead. Similarly, 'to solidify' refers to the process of becoming solid (from a liquid or gaseous state). However, there does not appear to be a corresponding verb to describe the process of becoming brittle? As there seems to not be a verb 'to brittlify', it is necessary to introduce a verbal phrase 'to become brittle' - as in the expression 'her bones became brittle'. Very interesting!

---