I have a question about nouns triplets like "sofa box container" and I'll formulate it at the end. I have some reasoning and I want to make sure I'm correct.
First of all consider the following sample. Common sense helps understand the meaning of these words but I want to know the general rule for understanding the meaning of noun sequences.
- Spider man — a man who is also a spider
- Killer Queen — a queen who is also a killer
- Blade Runner — a man who runs on the blade
- Tiger lily — lily of "tiger" type
These are well-known examples. But I suppose the first two should be written with hyphen: spider-man, killer-queen.
Following the logic I tried to create sensible examples of 2-nouns combinations:
Killer queen — a queen of killers
Killer's queen — a queen, who is killer's
Killer-queen — a killer who is also a queen
Queen-killer — a queen who is also a killer
Queen killer — a killer of queens
Queen's Killer — a killer, who is queen'sBlade runner — 1) a runner who is like a blade (blade as adjective) — 2) someone or something who makes the blade run
Blade's runner — the runner of blade's property
Blade-runner — a blade who is a runner (blade and also a runner)
Runner-blade — a runner who is a blade (runner and also a blade)
Runner blade — 1) something that blades (verb) a runner — 2) a blade of type runner (what kind of blade? — runner)
Runner's blade — a blade of runner's property
Suppose we have 2 nouns A and B. The possible combinations of these nouns are:
A B
A's B
A-B
B-A
B's A
B A
Now the question:
How do I interpret combinations of length more than two?
What does "sofa box container" mean? Is it "boxes containing sofas" or "container of boxes where sofas were inside"? And does "sofa container box" mean "boxes which contain sofas" or "a box for a container of sofas"? Any other versions?
And finally, how do I say without prepositions "the machines which contain databases"?
I'm so confused by noun sequences. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Best Answer
English is not unambiguous, so there is no absolute rule. However, generally speaking the last noun is modified by the preceding nouns. "Sofa box container", has container as the last word, so it refers to a container, and the type of container is one for a sofa box.
When you hyphenate the meaning doesn't change much, so, from your example:
Is not correct, a "queen-killer" is a person who kills queens. The hyphen just tightens the relationship.
The emphasis is the same with the genitive but the relationship is a little more ambiguous:
Can mean a lot of things, the two most obvious candidates being a killer who works for the queen or a person who killed the queen. Nonetheless, the rule still applies, it is a killer, and the type of killer is "queen's".
So the bottom line is that usually the last word is the main word, the rest are modifiers.
For your example, database containing machines would be appropriate, since the main subject is the machine, and the rest say what type of machine. In this particular instance though the idiom would be just plain database machines, or database servers.