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I was wondering according to American English if this is a valid grammatical sentence:

This item is a little use unfriendly.

It sounds ok but I was wondering if "use unfriendly" (I mean without the 'r', not user-unfriendly) could be used as an adjective this way.

P.S. I was wondering if it is grammatical according to British English too.

Daniel
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Pacerier
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    Do you mean user-unfriendly? – Daniel Jan 20 '12 at 14:13
  • @Danielδ uh no, i mean "use unfriendly" or "use-unfriendly" – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 14:30
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    What is the difference in meaning between user-unfiendly and use-unfriendly? – Daniel Jan 20 '12 at 14:33
  • @Danielδ sometimes depending on the phrasing of the entire sentence / paragraph, one may sound better than the other, so now I know I can choose which to use because both are grammatical – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 14:37
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    As I understand English, use unfriendly is not a grammatical adjective. It doesn't obey the rules of grammar and it doesn't conform to standard usage. – Daniel Jan 20 '12 at 14:44
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    Too localised. Native speakers do not use this expression, so why is OP asking if he can use it? – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '12 at 15:10
  • @FumbleFingers by native speakers do you mean American English or British English? – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 15:18
  • @Pacerier: Oh gosh! Don't tell me Americans habitually say it! – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '12 at 15:19
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    ...I've just been to the trouble of checking every one of about 100 consecutive occurences of use unfriendly indexed by Google Books. In every single case, it's just the ordinary usage where "use" is a verb. I stand by my closevote. – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '12 at 15:23
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    I'll go out on limb and speak for all varieties of English but Indian (AmE, BrE, IrE, AusE, etc), and say that even if there are logical rules that might allow 'use unfriendly' it is very grating, sounds like a non-native neologism, everybody would cringe and wonder why you didn't say the perfectly acceptable 'user-unfriendly'. – Mitch Jan 20 '12 at 15:58
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    Just to add a point to what others have said: "user-friendly" is a commonly used and accepted term with a well-understood meaning. There is no point in trying to create a new term, "use-friendly", that as far as I can tell from your post would just be synonym for "user-friendly" except that it would be unfamiliar. Don't try to create new words when there's already a perfectly good existing word. And especially in this case, where it's just one letter different, 99.9% of readers would take it as a mistake. – Jay Jan 20 '12 at 16:12

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If you mean by "use unfriendly" unfriendly to use, then you need a hyphen, or the sentence is hard to parse and read and ungrammatical. Also, unfriendly to user would be a more conventional way to describe such an item, hence user-unfriendly. The latter would be a better choice semantically and grammatically. Not user-friendly would probably be more popular than user-unfriendly, and this EL&U post gives several more options to replace it, too, if you're still not comfortable using it.

Community
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Daniel
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  • So you are saying that Kris is (absolutely) wrong? – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 14:50
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    Yes. I guess s/he must be using a different definition of grammatical. – Daniel Jan 20 '12 at 14:53
  • @Danielδ: You have conveniently overlooked the part "I presume you mean user -unfriendly." in my answer. You were talking about use unfriendly instead. – Kris Jan 20 '12 at 15:04
  • @Danielδ I don't get it, regardless of style, it's either grammatical or its not right? – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 15:09
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    @Kris Well, the OP asked whether use unfriendly was grammatical. You began your answer saying "Yes. Grammatically, it would be correct." That's what I am disagreeing with. Yes, the OP did mean user-unfriendly, but that's not what he was asking about. – Daniel Jan 20 '12 at 15:16
  • @Pacerier: You are correct, and in this case, use unfriendly is not grammatical. I assumed Kris had thought grammatical means something other than its real meaning, and had therefore erroneously called use unfriendly grammatical. Turns out s/he may have been saying something else; I'm not yet sure what it is. – Daniel Jan 20 '12 at 15:20
  • @Danielδ: Did you not mean need a hyphen in your first link? The rest looks good to me - daft question though, IMHO, so I'm sticking to my new cruel but fair policy of not upvoting even correct answers to questions I think should be closed. A brief comment could have set OP on the path to righteous language usage. – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '12 at 15:39
  • @Pacerier: "It's either grammatical or it's not": unfortunately for automatic grammar checkers, it's kinda gray. Most things are not gray: "I are" is always wrong. But some...there's a question (it's OK for some people but not for others; it's not OK when talking to the queen but OK with your friends). Then there's the case (such as this one) where one might be able to give a logical justification for correctness (I don't think you can here), but it still sounds very grating. – Mitch Jan 20 '12 at 15:55
  • @Mitch But of course when someone ask if it is a "valid grammatical sentence", it obviously means standard English isn't it? – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 16:06
  • @Pacerier: "Use unfriendly" is always ungrammatical, as applying friendly to the wrong type of noun. "User unfriendly" may or may not be acceptable (because user friendly is idiomatic in the computer field, though not strictly meaningful). Please edit question to make clear which you are asking about (before a flamewar breaks out...) – Tim Lymington Jan 20 '12 at 16:30
  • @TimLymington Please elaborate on your first statement. How is "use" the wrong type of noun? – MetaEd Jan 20 '12 at 17:00
  • @Pacerier: 'obviously' yes, in school contexts but not here at ELU. When you're really sick, do you go 'to the hospital' or 'to hospital'? Both are grammatical for particular varieties (and the other one not at all). – Mitch Jan 20 '12 at 17:57
  • @Mitch But I explicitly stated the context is American English in the question itself – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 19:40
  • @TimLymington as per your request – Pacerier Jan 20 '12 at 19:42
  • @Pacerier: Sorry, I'm mixing too many message. RE standard English: there are many, so here at ELU you can't assume in general what is the standard. Re: grammatical: there's logic and there's how it sounds, and 'sounds' wins. Exec summary: Don't use 'use-unfriendly', use 'user-unfriendly'. – Mitch Jan 20 '12 at 19:52
  • @Pacerier isn't that exactly what my answer says? – Kris Jan 21 '12 at 05:00
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Using a hyphen between user and unfriendly makes it more readable:

user-unfriendly

Daniel
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Mustafa
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How about "this item is user-hostile", which Wiktionary defines as "Difficult to use, especially for an untrained user."?

Mark Beadles
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cornbread ninja 麵包忍者
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Here is a kind of answer from a student of ancient Greek (me!). You can say that it is a kind of abbreviation (from 'unfriendly user'). So it involves ellipsis (leaving something out, which has to be 'understood' by the reader/hearer. It looks, as it stands, somewhat germanic, and I am tempted to say that it should therefore be written as a single word ('userunfriendly'). But that violates an embedded sense of how things should look (and sound) in English. As I have left it, the word 'user' functions as what in logic is called a 'predicate modifier' (something that changes the meaning of a predicate {adjective}). This is interesting, because, whereas in the past these things would eventually be settled by the emergence of authoritative dictionaries/grammars by specialists giving names to phenomena such as this, this is no longer how it happens.

Tuffy
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Yes.

Grammatically, it would be correct. However, you may want to rephrase it as: This item is a little less user-friendly. [I presume you mean user -unfriendly.]

un·friend·ly/ˌənˈfren(d)lē/ Adjective:
Not friendly: "she shot him an unfriendly glance"; "environmentally unfriendly activities". Synonyms:
hostile - inimical - unkind - adverse - unfavourable

Kris
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    By your definition of "grammatically correct", it would appear that any combination of noun+adjective is valid. It doesn't even make much sense semantically - how can something be "unfriendly" towards "use"? Is it therefore valid to say short trousers are "winter unfriendly"? ELU is supposed to be concerned with English as she is spoke - which may not be exactly grammatical, but at least that one does occur. – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '12 at 15:31
  • @Fumble: You make a good point, but the example 'winter unfriendly' actually does sound OK. Are there examples of noun + adjective that are definitely not allowed? – Mitch Jan 20 '12 at 15:50
  • @FumbleFingers: I think you mean, "English as she bees done spoke". :-) – Jay Jan 20 '12 at 16:07
  • @FumbleFingers How can something be "unfriendly" towards "use"? The same way something can be "incompatible" with "use". – MetaEd Jan 20 '12 at 16:58
  • @MetaEd: You're stretching "meaning" to its limits. Sure, it's semantically and grammatically okay (if a tad mundane) to say a chocolate teapot is incompatible with its use as a vessel for serving hot tea, but would anyone honestly say "This teapot is use-incompatible"? I think you're just being vexatious, to be honest. – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '12 at 17:37
  • For one, note that I was referring to use r-* unfriendly, not use unfriendly. As for grammar, everything else in grammar is in black-and-white, semantics is subjective. @FumbleFingers I understand your sentiment, but I'm fine with the semantic validity of user-unfriendly*. – Kris Jan 21 '12 at 04:45
  • If someone had down voted on the mistaken presumption that I was referring to use unfriendly rather than use r* unfriendly*, I must ask them to read my answer once again. Else I feel the down votes on that false premise would amount to cheating. Regarding diverting the attention from the real question of 'friendly' vs. 'unfriendly', the over-enthusiasm is clearly unwarranted. – Kris Jan 21 '12 at 05:05
  • @Kris: I don't want to seem pedantic (particularly in light of my earlier comment to MetaEd), but I was one of those who downvoted. Partly because I don't much care for the "grammatically correct" line, and telling OP that "Yes, he can (reasonably?) say 'use-unfriendly'". But mainly because OP specifically said he was not asking about "user-unfriendly" - so whether what you say is "correct" or not (and I don't care for the usage myself), it's simply inappropriate to post an answer based on making the switch from use- to user-. – FumbleFingers Jan 21 '12 at 13:07