attributive freshman

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Nov 2, 2006, at 9:40 AM, Amy West wrote:

> I'm curious as to others' responses about this use:
>
> When I see "freshman" used attributively, I have the instinct to
> decline it to agree with its noun in number. Does anyone else?

a lot of people, apparently:

"freshman girls": 95,900 raw google webhits
"freshmen girls": 43,600

that's 2:1 (well, 2.2:1) in favor of "freshman", but still an awful
lot of "freshmen".  roughly similar results for other possibilities:

"freshman boys": 53,400
"freshmen boys": 24,800 (also 2.2:1)

"freshman men": 33,000
"freshmen men": 12,500  [no doubt "...men men" looks rather silly, so
this is 2.6:1]

"freshman students": 365,000
"freshmen students": 252,000 (only 1.4:1)

greater disparities for non-human heads:

"freshman classes": 98,200
"freshmen classes": 29,800 (3.3:1)

"freshman dormitories": 808
"freshmen dormitories": 168 (4.8:1)

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org