Talk:nonhorse

musing

I wonder how many things like this are attested... nonhuman surely is; noncow, nondog, nongod? - -sche (discuss) 19:40, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

There's even one book hit of "non-noncow"... - -sche (discuss) 19:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

(deprecated template usage) nonraven is a good one. Equinox ◑ 19:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Ooh, indeed. And nonturtle. Oh, but it occurs to me that most of these words have adjective sections, and yet are probably only ever nouns, sometimes used attributively. - -sche (discuss) 20:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, attestability is king. I've added tons of the non- words and I've specifically checked for existence of plurals. Equinox ◑ 20:58, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Right (and I checked for nonturtles, and didn't add it when I saw only two hits), but that doesn't show them to be adjectives. That is, would anyone say "the animal was nonraven"? Actually, I suppose someone (philosophical) would. - -sche (discuss) 21:06, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I see what you mean. But attributive usage of a noun seems to presuppose that there is noun usage, and suppose (off the top of my head) that we see things like "nonmeasles infection" but never see "he has nonmeasles", that seems to suggest a sort of strange, non-comparable adjective rather than a noun, doesn't it? Equinox ◑ 22:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC)