N-looking

[Jonathan Lighter]

Of course I can't swear, but I strongly, strongly believe that this
construction (e.g., "some hippie-looking guy") has been in my rulebook for
forty years if not longer.

I've often used it - in speech - for its informal effect.

JL

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Victor <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: N-looking
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
> >
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> >
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