In grade school, we learn that a noun can be a person, place, thing, or idea, while adjectives can be used to modify those nouns. But some nouns get extra credit, as they function as both a noun and an adjective. These nouns go by several names, such as attributive nouns or modifier nouns, but we’ll refer to them as “descriptive nouns.”
Think of terms such as “train ticket,” “coffee cup,” and “data scientist.” Each individual word is a noun by itself, but when paired, the premodifier (first noun) functions in the same way that an adjective would. The words “train,” “coffee,” and “data” all provide additional information that paints a clearer picture than if you were to just say “ticket,” “cup,” or “scientist.” The premodifiers are descriptive nouns, and the second words remain normal nouns. (Premodifers can also be standard adjectives, as in “blue boat,” or participles, such as “falling rain.”)
Sometimes descriptive nouns do a far better job than an adjective could. Take the example, “He wore a glove” — there are a lot of open questions about what type of glove. If you add an adjective and say, “He wore a leather glove,” there’s still some uncertainty. But if you add a descriptive noun to say, “He wore a baseball glove,” you’ve gotten the message across in a clear and concise manner.
For as useful as they are, descriptive nouns don’t have the same level of flexibility as a standard adjective. Let’s say you’re talking about a busy sports bar; while “busy bar” can also be written as “bar that is busy,” “sports bar” can’t be written as “bar that is sports.” Also, these descriptive nouns don’t have a comparative form. In other words, while you can intensify the adjective “long” as “longer,” you can’t amplify “chicken soup” as “chickener” or “chickeniest soup.”
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