There is a set of really fun adjectives that can be defined as “Of or <relating to/contributing to/characteristic of> [some noun or concept]”. For example, ‘crinal’, ‘olfactory’, ‘ursine’, ‘hellenic’, ‘menstrual’, ‘equestrian’ but not ‘cowardly’, ‘antibromic’, ‘purple’, ‘preceptive’, ‘annoying’, ‘beautiful’.
What, if anything, are those words called?
Bonus question #1: Given a [some noun or concept] what’s an easy way of finding such an adjective for it? This entire question was prompted by the fact that it took me about 15 minutes to find the word “crinal”.
Bonus question #2: What fraction of all adjectives do words like these represent in English? Other languages?
Those are mostly adjectives based on the uncommon Latin or Greek cognate to a Germanic word in English, right? (Example: hircine = smelling like a goat.)
I think that there might not be similar structures in a lot of languages, because English has almost a parallel vocabulary, with pairs of Latinoid and Germanic words for so many things: ‘hairy’/‘hirsute’; ‘bearish’/‘ursine’, etc. But the latinoid adjectives often have different shades of meaning than the germanic, more than just social register. ‘Olfactory’ does not mean quite the same thing as ‘nasal’. (And ‘nosy’ means something else again. )
Like the old one about the hypochondriac who goes to the doctor about his gastric stomach, and gets told that not only is his stomach gastric, but he also has pulmonary lungs and a hepatic liver - but the good news is that he has a capital head.
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