"Noun Often Attributive" and "Adjective"

Abstract

THE USE OF THE LABEL often attrib to subclassify nouns (as distinguished from occasional comment or grouping as in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary [NID 2] and the OED [milk 9]) was, as far as I know, new to lexicography with the appearance of Webster's Third New International Dictionary (NID 3) in 1961. We who had agreed several years earlier that this form of subclassifying seemed worth undertaking and who worked out the method also planned to treat it in the explanatory notes in the front matter of the dictionary. For reasons that should be fairly clear to one who reads this article, what actually appears as Explanatory Note 6 can hardly be called an explanation: 6.i The label often attrib in italics added to the labeln at a main entry indicates that the noun is often used as an adjective equivalent in attributive position before a substantive (as in air passage, cabbage soup): air . .. n -s often attrib cab.bage... n -s often attrib din.ner... n -s often attrib fox... n, pl foxes or fox often attrib pep.per... n -s often attrib shoul.der... n -s often attrib va.ca.tion... n -s often attrib 6.2 While any noun is likely to get used attributively sometimes, the label often attrib is confined to those having such widespread general frequent attributive use that they could be entered and defined as adjectives or adjectival elements. The label is not used when there is an entered adjective homograph (as milk, adj and dog, adj). Also it is not used at open compounds that may be often used attributively when hyphened (as X ray in X-ray microscope). We expected that use of the label often attrib would be scrutinized, and we supposed that sometime we would have some explaining to do. It seemed best to wait and see who would turn his attention to the matter and how. We did