[Ads-l] nounified adjectives revisited

[Laurence Horn]

From Paul Krugman’s column in today’s Times:

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As you may recall — or maybe you don’t, with the crazy coming so thick and fast — the White House first seemed to say that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on Mexico, but may have been talking about a tax plan, proposed by Republicans in the House, that would do no such thing; then said that it was just an idea; then dropped the subject, at least for now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/building-a-wall-of-ignorance.html
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“Crazy” as a noun is probably one of the conversions we’ve discussed, but if it isn’t it could have been.  I’m wondering whether the use of the adjective-in-noun’s-clothing in such cases, as opposed to the well-established noun already on the lexical shelf (“craziness”) is that it’s…stronger?  More salient? Trendy?  (Although Krugman doesn’t strike me as the type who goes for trendy...)  Any speculation?

LH

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