Q: I am writing on behalf of my seventh-grade class. We consulted four dictionaries, and all of them said the word "district" was not an adjective.

My class and I believe that it is. Some examples would be "district court," "district library" and "district attorney." We were hoping you could help us solve our question. — Ira Movshovich, San Jose, California

A: Your dictionaries are wrong, Ira. They've been corrupted by the imprecision, incompleteness and superficiality of our age.

Yes, Ira, there is an adjectival "district." In fact, almost any noun — "book," "school," even "dictionary" — can be used to describe another noun, as in "book sale," "school library," "dictionary entry."

Grammarians call these "attributive nouns." That's why most dictionaries put the phrase "often attributive" in their entries for "district," indicating that it's frequently used as an attributive noun.

But be careful not to string together too many attributive nouns. A phrase like "school district library book sale" can turn into no(u)nsense.

Q: Is there any difference between "whatsoever" and "whatever"? — William, via email

A: I have no idea whatsoever. Just kidding! "Whatsoever is an intensive variant of "whatever." "He's done nothing whatsoever on the project," for instance, is more emphatic than "he's done nothing whatever."

It's quite common to insert a word, in this case "so," into the middle of a word to juice it up, e.g., "my keys are some-damn-where!" Linguists have a fancy word for this linguistic process: "tmesis" (pronounced "tuh-MEE-sis").

Q: The Campbell's Soup commercial that says "the soup that eats like a meal" really gets on my nerves. I cannot picture a bowl of soup eating anything. — Karen Ritter, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

A: Though this ad may conjure up science-fiction headlines like "The Soup That Ate Bethlehem," fear not!

Campbell's is not implying that the soup is eating anything. Instead, it has souped up the verb "eat" to mean "to have the experience of eating," as in, this "eats (goes down) well."

Though this usage may not go down well with some folks, it's quite common to reverse the action of a verb, turning the object acted upon into the actor.

For instance, we say a car "drives" like a dream, a student "tests" poorly, and a book "reads" well, even though it's the driver, the teacher or the reader who are performing the respective actions.

Nevertheless, "the soup that eats like a meal" is definitely hard to swallow.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, California, 90254.

Photo credit: ivabalk at Pixabay