This will annoy you
Mar. 14th, 2011 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnBear with me a moment - are there any commonly-used pairs of nouns where the first noun is used as an adjective or descriptor for the second, where that second word can equally be used as an adjective for the first?
Yes, I know, this needs an example - I was just walking upstairs with one of the mountains of junk that tend to accumulate on my desk, and I saw "Oyster mushrooms" on an unusually comprehensible supermarket receipt. I misread it as "Mushroom oysters" at first and wondered when we had become posh enough gits to have those in our shopping, but after looking again, I wondered if such a thing as a mushroom oyster existed (they don't) and whether there were any of these word pairs that made sense either way around.
Apparently there is such a thing as a "cloud mushroom", sort of, but its actual name is one of the least appetizing things ever, so that barely misses out.
Yes, I know, this needs an example - I was just walking upstairs with one of the mountains of junk that tend to accumulate on my desk, and I saw "Oyster mushrooms" on an unusually comprehensible supermarket receipt. I misread it as "Mushroom oysters" at first and wondered when we had become posh enough gits to have those in our shopping, but after looking again, I wondered if such a thing as a mushroom oyster existed (they don't) and whether there were any of these word pairs that made sense either way around.
Apparently there is such a thing as a "cloud mushroom", sort of, but its actual name is one of the least appetizing things ever, so that barely misses out.
