N-looking

[Victor]

Here are five examples. These are not easy to find and each represents
100-200 similar occurrences. It took me about fifteen minutes to set up
a filter selective enough to ignore most other combinations. But if you
look for preselected combinations "N1 looking N2", it might be easier to
find some specific examples [where N1 is something that could plausibly
serve as a target (e.g., an animal or a type of individual, such as
bodyguard or janitor) and N2 is one of simple human descriptors, such as
man, woman, boy, girl, guy, girlfriend, etc.].

The first three below were found using general filters eliminating
"looking P" combinations. The last two were found looking for more
specific patterns.

VS-)

http://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news.php?NewsID=10370
_Animal-looking cars could cut road deaths_

Road safety campaigners could cut the road death rate by lobbying for
cars to be made to look more like animals, claim researchers.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6dbfi/creepy_angel_of_death_looking_sculpture_in_new/
Creepy _Angel of Death looking_ sculpture in New Orleans' Louis
Armstrong Airport [linked to http://www.flymsy.com/images/flying_man.jpg]

http://www.dailyhaha.com/_pics/wet_cat.htm
A Wet Cat Looking Creature
[should be "A wet, cat-looking creature"]

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=20628433
Is that the dumb MMO that you see in commercials where this dog looking
guy is throwing pies???

http://www.arellanes.com/archives/000481.html
I saw Pavel Telic(ka, the newly-confirmed EU Commissioner for Health and
Consumer Affairs. He was chatting with a guy in a hockey jersey and with
another bodyguard-looking guy, trying to ignore a drunk who was
teetering dangerously close.


Mark Mandel wrote:
> I think of the construction "___-looking" as taking only adjectives,
> not nouns. I don't recall seeing "N-looking" before this item:
>
> Ancestor For All Animals Identified
> http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/27/animal-ancestor.html
>
> A sperm-looking creature called monosiga is the closest living
> surrogate to the ancestor of all animals, according to new research
> that also determined animal evolution may not always follow a
> trajectory from simple to complex.
>
> Mark Mandel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>

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