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the text I came across:

"We have improved our comfort ride toilet by adding a heated seat."

"our comfort ride toilet" puzzles me because in my learning mind what make sense is:

1 - "We have improved THE comfort OF OUR ride toilet by adding a heated seat."

OR

2 - ""We have improved our ride toilet COMFORT by adding a heated seat."

I mean the way i see "comfort" is an adjective describing "ride toilet" isn't it so?

PS I'm assuming "ride toilet" is just an ordinary toilet right?

One more thing: if comfort means comfortable then the original sentence makes sense to me!

Luke Sawczak
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    Please provide the source of texts that you are querying. I assume the sense is 'our toilet which is comfortable to ride', though ride seems an odd choice of word unless the toilet is in a moving vehicle. – Kate Bunting Dec 07 '21 at 11:30
  • @ Kate Buntin: the source is: "https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/52305/improve-vs-improve-on-upon" an answer of a stackexchange member. I was puzzled by this writing and curious to understand it better – Euler Henry Dec 07 '21 at 11:43
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    It just looks to me as though the two-word collocation "comfort ride" is being used as an "ad-hoc, one-off" *adjectival* term. Which implies there's no reason to dig any deeper into the relevant syntax (there isn't really any! :) Sure - they could have explicitly inflected for an adjective, and/or even included "scare quotes", as ...improved our "comfortable ride" toilet by... But I personally have no problem with the version as actually used (I'm assuming it's a toilet on a long-haul touring bus or similar, but maybe even that isn't necessary to justify the somewhat "quirky" usage). – FumbleFingers Dec 07 '21 at 11:45
  • @FumbleFingers: thanks for reply first of all, but if this stackexchange member have used the word: "comfortable" instead of "comfort" like "comfortable ride" I would have understood that. So i think maybe that is what it comes down to. can "comfort" be used as an adjective? – Euler Henry Dec 07 '21 at 11:53
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    Don't get too hung up on grammatical rules in the context of product names and promotional / advertising text. Remington is a major Anglophone company, for example, and they sell / sold a product called Remington Men's Comfort* Electric Razor*. When you say *if someone had used comfortable instead of comfort you "would have understood", when you really mean is you would have been happy* with the phrasing (because it didn't violate your ideas about "grammar"). But obviously you *understand* the intended sense! – FumbleFingers Dec 07 '21 at 12:04
  • @FumbleFingers, you've been very clarifying to me. Thanks. What would you say a "Confort ride" toilet is? a toilet within a car? like those traillers? – Euler Henry Dec 07 '21 at 12:23
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    Like @KateBunting in the first comment, my default interpretation with no other context to go on would be that we're talking about a toilet on commercial transport (bus, train,...). But normally there *is* a useful real-world context, and that's how I'd decide exactly what environment this "comfort ride" toilet was expected to be used in. I wouldn't waste mental effort worrying about syntax, or the possible range of meanings someone might intend when they string words together like this. – FumbleFingers Dec 07 '21 at 12:33

1 Answers1

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It's being used as a compound, most plausibly as a model of toilet:

We have improved our Comfort RideTM toilet by adding a heated seat.

This is a common formula for branding an otherwise generic-sounding product.

Now introducing our Click DreamTM gaming mouse with twenty-seven programmable buttons.

One might well ask whether there's an internal logic to "Comfort Ride", and why it isn't "Comfortable Ride".

First, brand names are rarely bound by normal grammatical rules... In fact, they're quite often laughable. They tend to simplify the morphology for memorability and euphony. (I would say "Comfort Ride" has a good commercial melody to it.)

Second, you could analyze "comfort" as qualifying the type of ride — a ride defined by its comfort, a ride in comfort. Compare "car ride". Of course, the nature of the qualification is as vague as can be, but that doesn't bother advertisers either. What sells is the association.

Luke Sawczak
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