www.alphadictionary.com

What about a hoary lady? Doesn't sound Latin to me, though. Further inquiry is necessary.

Brazilian dude

No, it's not Latin,

hoar
O.E. har "gray, venerable, old," the connecting notion being gray hair, from P.Gmc. *khairaz, from PIE *koi- "to shine." Ger. retains the word as a title of respect, in Herr. Of frost, it is recorded in O.E. (hoar-frost is c.1290), expressing the resemblance of the white feathers of frost to an old man's beard. Used as an attribute of boundary stones in O.E. (probably in ref. to being gray with lichens), hence common in place names.

Brazilian dude

This seems to be in agreement with what I said:
(forming adjectives that look very similar to participial adjectives that are formed from verbs ( like: a home-made cake ), but forming the adjectives from nouns, instead)

Brazilian dude

Look out for multifuncionality in English. English is losing affixes (-er, -est, -ed) at quite a clip, but not grammatical functions. The result is that the remaining affixes take on those functions left by affixes that have disappeared in addition to their traditional ones.

The suffix -ed, as several of you pointed out, not only marks Past Tense, Past Participle, but adjectives, particularly those meaning "Having N", such as forested, fruited, and--for some reason--my favorite, bearded.

As even this adjectival suffix disappears (double-barrel[led] shotgun, fruit[ed] jello, etc.) it is more and more limited to compound adjectives like white-haired, long-armed, and white shoed.

Why not white-shod? Because we simply don't use the verb any more outside reference to horses. We wouldn't say, "After he shod himself" rather than "after he put his shoes on." This is a question of usage rather than grammar.

"A glamorously shod woman came into the restaurant the other day. No one could take their eyes off her shoes."

Apo

You mustn't forget the "s" in her Pinkness, the IPU (mhhnbs)!

Any remaining infidels, please educate yourselves at, for example, http://www.palmyra.demon.co.uk/humour/ipu.htm

But if shoed and haired are adjectives in white-shoed and white-haired lady (they are doubtless adjectives on their own), what is white before them? Can an adjective modify another adjective? That's unheard of! The only thing that can modify adjectives are adverbs, and white is definitely not an adverb. Can we say that both white and shoed/haired are adjectives on their own right that modify lady? I don't think so. The lady may have white hair and white shoes and be black, yellow, or pink with yellow spots.

Brazilian dude

I doubt if the suffix -ed automatically makes an adjective out of the affixed hair. An expression like "a haired man" is a bit clumsy. In your example, Bradu, it is more appropriate to think the -ed derives an adjective from the entire noun compound "grey hair." In this analysis "grey" can remain an adjective since it first connects with "hair" to make the noun compound that derives another adjective by affixing the -ed.

Flam

That's exactly what I said before, Flam. Thanks for corroborating it, though.

Brazilian dude

But if shoed and haired are adjectives in white-shoed and white-haired lady (they are doubtless adjectives on their own). . .

versus

[The adjectival suffix -ed] is more and more limited to compound adjectives like white-haired, long-armed, and white shoed.

But if you confirm that I am as smart as you are by agreeing with me, what have I more to say?

Flam

But you're more smarter , but you know the 8th place is taken already.

Brazilian dude

BD, I do not doubt that somewhere in the world someone is using the word shoe as a verb. As one of my favorite posters likes to say, one of the nice things about English is you can verb any noun.

And as one of my other favorite posters likes to say, before we can have a discussion of verbs and adjectives and participles, we first have to decide what a word is.

I have this vague notion that the functions that words serve in our modern languages have not been entirely persistent/consistent, i.e., limited to the strict familiar roles we ascribe to them today.

But it's late and I don't have any more time to post at the moment... Maybe more later.

-Tim

BD, I do not doubt that somewhere in the world someone is using the word shoe as a verb

But shoe can indeed be a verb.

Brazilian dude

Obviously, posting at these late hours, which the necessities of the day seem to be limiting my free computer time to, is not a good idea.

But here I go anyway.

Yes, BD, 'shoe' is also a verb. However, we seem to have limited the verb form of 'shoe' to that of the animal kingdom, in general. How often have you heard people speaking of 'shoeing' themselves or someone else?

People 'put their shoes on'... They don't get 'shod' like horses.

As an aside, I think one of the reasons is that 'shoo' in English sounds the same and is completely unrelated.

But I think another reason is that 'to shoe' sounds like you're doing something a bit more enduring than merely getting dressed with a specific article of clothing.

Thus, my statement.

-Tim

However, after I've put my shoes on I am then shod. Even tho' I don't *nail them on*

Katy