Fail as an adjective

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Funner" and "funnest": freshman faves since at least 1976, in my personal
experience.
JL
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fail as an adjective
>
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>
> On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:01 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >
> >
> > At 7/10/2009 05:12 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:
> >> Or is it that 'so' has become an all-purpose intensifier that goes
> >> with
> >> nouns as well as adjectives?
> >
> > Like "It was so fun."
>
> not really.
>
> we've covered the case of "fun" here several times in the past.  the
> summary is that alongside the noun "fun" an adjective "fun" has
> developed for many speakers (to the grave dismay of many commenters).
> (in previous discussion, we looked at possible routes to this
> development.)
>
> we then get the adjective "fun" with the full range of degree
> modifiers (e.g., "very fun"), and some speakers have an inflectional
> comparative ("funner") and superlative ("funnest"). (the noun "fun"
> continues in use, as in "it was a lot of fun".)
>
> arnold
>
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