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I read this at the economist, and it's the 2nd sentence in the 2nd paragraph.

That is small consolation for an Israeli establishment still hankering after the much easier rapport it had with Egypt's ousted Mubarak regime, especially in matters military.

At first I thought "matters" here means "important", because I tend to understand it this way: "especially in military that matters". Then it occurs to me that phrase like "something good" has the "noun + adjective" structure, so I guess "matters military" means "military matters". But it really costs me a lot of time to figure it out, and I would have put it as "military matters" instead. Because my limited language sense tells me I can postpose an adjective (phase) only when it's used with unspecified pronouns such as "anything, everything or something", or when the phrase itself is too long.

So question one: In this case, which one sounds more comfortable to you? matters military or military matters?

Qustion two: When can I postpose an adjective and when is it imperative?

zwangxian
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    I prefer preposited adjectives, but am only mildly annoyed by postposited. You must do it in certain fixed phrases which have been around so long they're no longer generally perceived to be of this construction: court martial, attorney general, sergeant major, lieutenant general, fiddlers three. So far as I know there's nothing to forbid posposition non-determinant adjectives; but except in deliberately archaizing contexts it sounds odd and pretentious. Graves & Hodge mocked its overuse in interwar writing on the arts. – StoneyB on hiatus Nov 19 '12 at 00:59
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    There are also a few adjectives which are only used postpositively: galore, extraordinaire. – StoneyB on hiatus Nov 19 '12 at 01:07
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    If you think that’s good, take a gander at the Major-General’s Song, by Gilbert and Sullivan. Like several other verbs that end in -t, cost is invariant in the past tense: “Today it costs me, yesterday it cost me, it has always cost me.” Other common verbs that work this way include shut, put, and cast. – tchrist Nov 19 '12 at 01:19
  • Here’s a longer list: beat, bet, bid, cast, cost, cut, hit, hurt, knit, let, put, quit, set, shed, shut, sit , slit, split, spread, and wet. – tchrist Nov 19 '12 at 01:57
  • @tchrist: Thanks for pointing that out! I always forget the past tense form of cost... – zwangxian Nov 19 '12 at 02:30
  • The adjective can be postponed if it is the sole or principle descriptive term needed to understand a plural (or non-singular) category. e.g. matters mathematical courts martial inspectors general – Andrew Lambert Nov 19 '12 at 06:56
  • See also: The Brothers Grimm. – tylerharms Nov 19 '12 at 08:50
  • @StoneyB: Though galore adds a flavour of gaiety (you'd say pavilions galore but not corpses galore), it's surely better to consider it as a rare postposed quantifier. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 19 '12 at 10:29
  • @Amazed "The adjective can be postposed if it is the sole or principal descriptive term needed to understand a plural (or non-singular) category, e.g. matters mathematical , courts martial , inspectors general" – Kris Nov 19 '12 at 10:30
  • @Amazed Can you link to the source? – Kris Nov 19 '12 at 10:30
  • @Kris, No, I can't as I wasn't relying on a source. That's why I posted my suggestion as a comment. – Andrew Lambert Nov 19 '12 at 18:58
  • @tchrist: I'm not checking them all, but bet, knit, quit, and wet are certainly not strictly invariant in the past tense - betted, knitted, quitted and wetted are all valid alternatives. The situation is different with cost and set, where we do not have a choice, but costed and setted (The children were setted at the beginning of the school year) are required for certain senses of the verbs. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 20 '12 at 09:55
  • @StoneyB: 'except in deliberately archaizing contexts it sounds odd and pretentious' - I'm nicking that. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 20 '12 at 09:58
  • "Except in contexts archaizing, it sounds odd and pretentious." – GEdgar Nov 20 '12 at 12:36
  • @EdwinAshworth The only one of your list that doesn’t sound terribly wrong to my ear is knitted, which is sometimes used as an adjective. I don’t think I’ve heard any of the others, and since I would certainly consider them “wrong” if I did, I think I’d recall if they’d crossed my path. – tchrist Nov 20 '12 at 13:04
  • @tchrist: Betted is, I think, an Americanism, and it sounds off to me too. Quitted rings a bell; I associate it with older novels and the leave not give up sense. Knitted is the usual past tense hereabouts. I seem to remember the variant wetted being advocated in the sense of 'deliberately moisten', or the figurative use - 'If the entire membrane is properly wetted'; 'wetted the baby's head'; 'wetted his whistle'. There is a treatment at http://www.englishpage.com/irregularverbs/info.html#5 . – Edwin Ashworth Nov 21 '12 at 10:38
  • I think there is an implied meaning in this sentence that means: all things related to military; at least that is what I feel different compared to when you say: especially in military matters (specific to 'matters related to military); while: especially in matters military (specific to all things related to military - in relation to the sentence earlier). And there's a feeling when you use it in some context, an 'antiquated' thing that still exist until now. – Flonne Nov 22 '18 at 10:18

2 Answers2

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We all know the rule of thumb that you ‘never put an adjective after the noun which it is describing’.

A more accurate statement is: Adjectives usually occur in the attributive or the predicative position; there are some that are used solely, or in certain circumstances, post-positively (adjectives do as well appear in reduced clauses and sentence fragments).

Collins CoBuild English Grammar lists four sub-classes of post-positive adjectives, ie adjectives which must or may be used post-nominally (Points 1 - 4 below are taken from my copy of Collins CoBuild English Grammar, though I've added the comments for class 1 and given new examples. The rest, apart from the obvious reference back to the thread, is semi-original - I can't remember where I've picked it up or my selection process for retaining as valuable / discarding. I'm certainly quoting myself in part from 'Wordwizard'. Oh, and the fourth position for adjectives is the absolute usage: Happy with his lolly, Tim did not see the kingfisher dart past.):

  1. Adjectives used only post-positively: designate elect extraordinaire incarnate manqué (galore is often included here, but I think is far more quantifier-ish) (note the loan-word connection involved; in French, adjectives are usually postposed, of course)

  2. Some adjectives are used immediately after a measure, eg three miles high: broad deep high long old tall thick wide

  3. The adjectives concerned involved present responsible proper can be used before or after the noun they modify – but the meaning changes: Do you think they are responsible people? The people responsible will be brought to justice.

  4. The adjectives affected available required suggested may be used either pre- or post-nominally with no change of meaning: We haven’t got the required money / money required.

I’d add a fifth usage - deliberately archaizing contexts (regards to StoneyB), often with a nod to G & S say. matters military; matters mathematical where the accepted word order is reversed for effect. This could get very tedious very quickly, and prompted the original posting.

Attributive adjective + noun (phrase) and noun (phrase) + post-positive adjective have often become collocations or even compound nouns (red sunset; Blue Moon // devil incarnate; President Elect), and are often set idioms.

I'd suggest that especially Latin connections are jealously guarded by highbrow scholars (as in present continuous) and lawyers (as in fee simple absolute), in their jargon.

Edwin Ashworth
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    +1 One niggle: Off the top of my head I'd consider three miles a noun phrase modifying high - "How high? -Three miles." – StoneyB on hiatus Nov 20 '12 at 12:34
  • +1 Wish you provided some links. Also, delineated the quoted portions, annotations and the rest. – Kris Nov 20 '12 at 12:57
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    @StoneyB: I agree. Cobuild is useful but not infallible. 'Skin deep' is a numberless variant - we do seem to have a noun modifying an adjective! – Edwin Ashworth Nov 20 '12 at 19:30
  • Thanks. I suppose that very useful information can go into the answer as an edit (for those who came in late like me). – Kris Nov 21 '12 at 04:52
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    I think it might be good to explain the difference between "responsible people" and "people responsible". The former suggests that the people being described are a subset of an an indefinite set of people who happen to be responsible. The latter equates an earlier-described set of people to a bounded set of people who are responsible. – supercat Feb 09 '14 at 20:52
  • @supercat: I could have gone on to exemplify different meanings of pre- and post- nominal concerned, involved etc too. I had to stop somewhere. And I'd say you're missing the point that the meanings of pre- and post-nominal 'responsible', not the frames of reference, change. In 'responsible people', responsible means 'reliable, able to be trusted'. In 'people responsible', responsible means 'who have done the good/bad/whatever deed, formulated the doctrine, etc'. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 09 '14 at 22:48
  • Alongside "galore" I'd add "aplenty". And I'd add a sixth usage: those expressions of format "(quantifier) (noun) (any adjective)", the most obvious example being "all things bright & beautiful, all creatures great & small", but also general expresions such as "we consider all men equal", "look for anything shiny", "I love all things spicy" etc. – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten Jul 15 '16 at 12:35
  • @Chappo 'We consider all men equal' is a very different construction from 'I love all things spicy'. The latter is a paraphrase of 'I love all spicy things'. The former is not a paraphrase of 'We consider all equal men', but of "We consider that all men are [born] equal". – Edwin Ashworth Jul 15 '16 at 12:52
  • ... Your 'sixth usage' is my fifth for nouns (archaic / quirky); it is unmarked and therefore indeed different with pronouns such as anything (new) / something (shiny). There's a 'that is' deletion. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 15 '16 at 12:56
  • Yes, "all men equal" was a poor choice as it's now idiomatic. I've seen you describe things elsewhere as "unmarked": I think I understand what this means but I must read up on this! :-) But from a non-specialist perspective, aren't all the adjectives used post-nominally in your 3rd & 4th usages also examples of a "that is" deletion? – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten Jul 15 '16 at 13:10
  • Did they originate as 'that is' constructions? Very probably. I was contrasting with the "We consider all men [to be] equal" construction. // 'Marked' in this sense is defined by AHDEL as 'explicitly characterized by or having a particular linguistic feature' (eg archaic or quirky-sounding). – Edwin Ashworth Jul 15 '16 at 14:20
  • @Edwin Ashworth— Could you please suggest which edition of Collins Cobuild are you refering to here? And is it still relevant? – user405662 Jan 23 '21 at 17:45
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    First Edition (1990); 2002 reprint. / I'm not aware of any recent changes in the usages they list. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 23 '21 at 18:00
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Question 1: They both sound good to me, but I prefer "military matters" because it's not pretentious or excessively literary. Question 2: There are a few adjectives, e.g., galore, that must be postposed.

There are sentences in which postposing the adjective is normal:

In some instances, adjectives can follow the direct object, in which case it is described as postposed, such as
'he paints the house red',
'they made the party wonderful'.

There are set phrases with postposed adjectives:

court-martial
attorney general

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    It seems to me in 'he paints the house red', red is an adverb modifying paints, rather than a postposed adjective modifying house. And perhaps adverbs accept being postposed more easily - that certainly sounds more natural to me than saying adverbs more easily accept being postposed – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '12 at 01:35
  • @FumbleFingers:? Red is a color. How can it possibly be an adverb? MW3UDE lists it as an adjective, noun, and verb (to redden), but I can't see how it can be called an adverb, unless by analogy with enough, which is an adjective in has enough money and an adverb in does well enough and has money enough. Perhaps in such a case it can be said to "function as an adverb", but that's all, as far as I can see. And as you have recently pointed out in a comment, "adverb" is a garbage-can concept, so what does it mean to say anything unusual is an adverb? I can't explain it any other way? –  Nov 19 '12 at 01:47
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    I just mean since it seems to modify the verb more than the noun (same as with make wonderful), maybe those examples of "postponed adjectives" aren't really the same thing as, for example, knights errant and OP's matters military. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '12 at 02:23
  • @FumbleFingers: I'll agree that this is one of those murky areas in linguistics, another piece of evidence that Linguistics is not a field of science, only a methodologically scientific field. Perhaps one can say that "red" is the product of an elided adverbial phrase, e.g., "We painted the roses so that they finally appeared to be red instead of white". That sounds reasonable enough. It also seems to say that the function of a word in a sentence is far more important than any part-of-speech label one can assign to it. IOW, "What does the word/phrase/clause do?" is the important question. –  Nov 19 '12 at 02:40
  • I reckon in things like he licked the bowl clean, the nominal "adjective" at the end acts at least partly as an adverb, rather than only associating with the preceding noun. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '12 at 03:43
  • @FumbleFingers: Yes, it seems to be part of an elided prepositional (adverbial) phrase: "until it was clean". By replacing the entire adverbial phrase, it does seem to function as an adverb. Maybe John Lawler will comment on that hypothesis. Such multipurposity is confounding for neatniks and structuralists, and turns analysis into rationalization, it seems to me. I don't disagree with your point. It's a good one, I think. Syntactic structures are very much like willow trees a-bending in the wind. –  Nov 19 '12 at 03:56
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    Sentences such as He painted the house red can be analysed as Subject-Verb –Object-Complement. More specifically, the complement is an object predicative and that slot can be filled by an adjective phrase (as in the example), a noun phrase (He painted the house a nasty colour) or a prepositional phrase (He painted the house on the outside). – Barrie England Nov 19 '12 at 07:44
  • @Barrie: +1 Thank you for the analysis. That makes good sense to me. –  Nov 19 '12 at 08:07
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    @Barrie: I'm afraid assigning a label like "adjective phrase" doesn't really enlighten me. I can see red is just a typical adjective in "He painted the red house", but when it's postponed to "He painted the house house red" it no longer seems to be the same animal as OP's example. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '12 at 15:26
  • @FumbleFingers. An adjective phrase has an adjective as its head, but, like all phrases, can be a single word. Red is an adjective in that second sentence, just as open is in this one: Oh, I can’t get this milk open. – Barrie England Nov 19 '12 at 15:58
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    @Barrie: Yes, but he could, for example, have "painted the blue house red". If you say blue and red are both adjectives, I can hardly disagree. But OP's "postponed" military directly modifies the preceding noun, where normally such adjectives come before the noun they modify. In my example here we naturally interpret blue as part of a standard "adjective+noun" construction. But with red I don't see this as "noun+adjective" in the same way as OP's example, so it's not obvious to me Bill's link provides good examples of "postposed adjectives", if knights errant is one of them. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '12 at 16:17
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    @FumbleFingers. I wasn’t really commenting in the context of the OP’s question, but in matters military the adjective is placed after the noun for stylistic effect. That is not the case in He painted the house red, where red is predicative. In matters military the adjective is still attributive, even when it comes after the noun. – Barrie England Nov 19 '12 at 17:49
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    I think that's the distinction I was trying to get at! OP's example is attributive, whereas usually, "postposed" adjectives are predicative. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '12 at 18:47