"finesse", the adjective

[Joel S. Berson]

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Ben should update his 2005 column to add soccer, where in contrast to
football or baseball "finesse" is I think always complimentary.

One may not be able to say "The Japanese squad seems finesse", but
then one is not able to say "The team seems finesse" either.  (I use
the royal "one".)  So does the adj + noun in "Japanese squad" make
any difference?

"We are not a finesse team" *sounds* OK to me -- I add air quotes;
but I'd prefer to *read* those quotation marks around "finesse".

Similarly, if I had seen "a similar strategy by the 'finesse'
Japanese squad", I would have been less disturbed, reading it as "the
Japanese squad of finesse".

I react to "The power American squad" in the same way as to
"finesse", but with the added difficulty that I wonder whether the
writer meant "powerful" instead.

Joel

At 8/9/2012 08:37 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>On Aug 9, 2012, at 7:14 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> An article in the Boston Globe today about the forthcoming US-Japan
> >> soccer gold medal match says "In a tournament that has featured
> >> extreme physicality, sucker punches and even head stomping, Wambach
> >> doesn't expect a similar strategy by the finesse Japanese squad ...".
> >
> > Here's a Language Log post I wrote in 2005 about the attributive use
> > of "finesse" in football and baseball:
> >
> > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002677.html
> >
>Attributive use, yes, but in those cases of "finesse team" arguably
>not "finesse, the adjective", given the oddness of ?"That team
>really seems finesse", anymore than Ben's apt antonym for it, "power
>team".  In Joel's example, though, it seemed to me, at first glance
>at least, that "Japanese squad" is an adj + noun combo, and a
>modifier of that would seem to have to be an adjective.  But on
>second glance maybe not; Arnold would be our indigenous expert on
>these matters.  The impossibility of "The Japanese squad seems
>finesse" would suggest that in "the finesse Japanese squad" too
>"finesse" is a noun rather than an adjective, but is "the power
>American squad" even possible?  Note that this wouldn't mean the
>same as "the powerful American squad"; after all, a finesse (and
>hence non-power) team can be powerful, like the old San Francisco
>49ers from the 1980s, and a power running attack can be anything but
>powerful, like that of last season's N. Y. Jets.
>
>LH
>
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