Carrol Cox wrote:

>
> You can't say "date for blind," "date for bad," but you _can_ say "date
> for play."
>
> There must be a fundamental syntactical difference.
>

If  "swim meet" is a meet for swimming, and "rest room" is a room for
euphemistic resting, why not "play date," a date for playing?

Why must the the relationship between adjective and noun be the same in every
case?  Syntax alone doesn't account for the differences expressed by an
abstract form such as "adjective noun."  Else what's a semantic for?


> Note  in the phrase "French Spanish teacher" you can reword as "French
> teacher of Spanish" but _not_ (without destroying the meaning) reword as
> "Spanish teacher of French."

Very true, but how does that bear on your insistence that in the current
phrase "play date," "play" in not an adjective?  For those who have no need
of it, it may be, like "chapter book," an unnecessary construction, but but
that's a different matter.

Marcia