hypercorrect pluralization of attributives

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Mar 30, 2009, at 7:41 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>

> At 3/30/2009 09:40 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>> not ridiculous or incorrect, much less hypercorrect.  *the name of
>> the
>> dice game* is "craps".  you "shoot craps".  "crap game" would be
>> absurd, like "jack game", "measle infection", etc.
>>
>> see the OED entry for "craps".  of obscure origin (not obviously
>> related to "crap" 'feces'),
>
> But, as I learned, the OED also has "crap" and "crap game".

ack.  i somehow missed that.

i would interpret "crap game" as a re-shaping of "craps game",
accommodating the expression to the usual pattern for N-N compounds.

i'm starting to find more such re-shapings.  i get small numbers of
hits for {"measle infection"} and {"mump infection"}, for instance.

meanwhile, Joel Berson has pointed out to me that the OED has an entry
for "eave", back-formed from "eaves", with citations from 1789.  the -
s of "eaves" was not originally a mark of the plural, but in modern
english the word is standardly plural in its syntax, and that led to
the creation of a singular "eave".  though many sources (like CGEL)
treat "eaves" as invariably plural, back-formed "eave" turns out to be
pretty frequent these days; a google search on {"to the eave"} turned
up plenty of examples -- many of them with "eave" as the first element
in a N-N compound (like "eave strut"), but many of them not.

arnold

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