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I'm thinking about how to use a noun to describe another noun. I set up an example, can anyone tell me the difference between

  • No grads jobs are available.
  • No grad jobs are available.

Or, maybe. One of them is grammatically incorrect?

Alex Teng
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Grad is an informal abbreviation for graduate. In the attributive sense 'jobs suitable for graduates', graduate would be singular. The possessive - graduates' jobs - might also be used. – Kate

James K
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    This is a perfectly good answer, so I've made it an answer. Please don't use the comment box for answers. – James K Mar 04 '23 at 19:57
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As Kate notes, "grad" is short for "graduate", so let's use the long form to be more clear.

The noun "graduate" here is being used as an adjective to modify "jobs". That is, we are talking about jobs that are suitable for graduates. When we use nouns this way, we use the singular version of the noun. That is, each job is suitable for one graduate. Similarly, if we were talking about parts for cars, we could say "car parts". Whether the parts are for use in one car or many cars, each part is only used in one car.

I suppose this is different from the way some other languages work, where you put an ending on an adjective that matches the number (and gender, but that's not the point here) of the noun it modifies. Like in Latin, you'd say "puella parva", "small girl", adjective is singular to match singular noun, but "puellae parvae", "small girls", adjective is plural to match plural noun.

Jay
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  • There is a cross-linguistic tendency for nouns that are used as modifiers in noun phrases to lose grammatical endings - which is one of the reasons for saying that nouns used in this way are not being "used as adjectives". – Colin Fine Mar 04 '23 at 21:01