Is there a word in English for modifiers such as “galore” which follow the word they modify rather than precede it? And what other such modifiers exist in English?
Another one: aplenty, as in, oh, um, say “noodles aplenty”. Dictionary.com just calls them adjectives.
Ago is another such modifier, which can function either as an adjective or adverb.
I’m afraid I don’t know what these words are called, if they have their own special name.
Modifiers appearing after the words they modify are too common to list. It is a simple structure.
You can find trash everywhere. Wasn’t that song terrible? She looked at me with her eyes half closed. And on and on…
I would think that “galore” is an adjective (though originally a phrase coming from Irish go leór, “enough”) that follows the noun. Such things exist in English, but not commonly; one example is the “general” in “surgeon general” or “attorney general.”
The thing that makes “galore” different from other adjectives is that you only hear it after the noun. I don’t think I’ve ever heard, say, “galore soda pop”. The examples given by daffyduck can all be rearranged to place the adjective in front of the noun and still make perfect sense.
That’s because that’s the way it’s put in the Gaelic languages. In Manx (which I know much better than Irish) the phrase is dy liooar. To say “enough time” (or “time enough” 
) you’d say traa dy liooar.
It’s the same reason why we say “attorneys general” and not “general attorneys.”
There’s also “the body electric.”
Interesting that “enough” works either way. I hear people say “There’ll be enough time for that when we get back” as well as “There’ll be time enough for that when we get back”.
“outdawazoo” ?
No?
Um, what are you referring to here when you say it can be an adjective? Are you referring to constructions such as “a year ago”? But it’s not the year that’s ago, it’s whatever the event is. “A year” says how far ago – it modifies “ago,” not the other way around. It’s like “six feet tall.”
Captains Courageous
Ago is classified as both adjective and adverb in Merriam-Webster, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th edition, 2000), and Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 edition). WordNet also classifies it that way, though I don’t think their word information is independently acquired.
WordNet’s entry for ago as adjective is simply: gone by; or in the past; “two years ago”. Unfortunately that example is a measly sentence fragment, and the other dictionaries mentioned aren’t very helpful here either. Perhaps a full example would be, “This oil lamp is a relic from a time long ago”, where long and ago are adjectives modifying the noun time. I’m prepared to be corrected though.
And then on the other hand, the Compact OED and the Cambridge Dictionary of American English describe ago as an adverb only. So who can you trust, really?
Not that common to find adjectives directly following and attached to the noun.
In the first sentence, ‘everywhere’ is an adverb modifying ‘find’ (and we all agree adverbs can and do bounce all around the sentence).
In the second sentence, this is just an inversion of ‘the song was terrible’, where the adjective follows a form of ‘to be’. The adjective only ends up next to the noun by accident because of the order of the rest of the sentence.
In the third sentence, I think ‘half closed’ is functioning as an adverb, although this is an interesting case.
Hmm, what about ‘He painted the door blue’ ? It seems ‘blue’ is functioning more like an adverb than an adjective. Linguists, is there a name for this role?
Hi, me again. A little Googling turned up some more examples of these only-after-the-word modifiers:
[ul]
[li]flat, meaning exactly — We managed to reach the station in five minutes flat.[/li][li]alike — She received hundreds of letters of support from friends and strangers alike.[/li][li]elect, meaning recently elected but not yet holding office — The president elect will soon be making his victory speech. (Often a hyphenated suffix however, so perhaps disqualified.)[/li][li]aplenty — We’ll have fireworks aplenty at the Chinese New Year celebration.[/li][/ul]
My favorite such modifier that churned up was actually flambé, but since it’s a French import, that might be cheating. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of borrowings like that from French: du jour, par excellence, and so on.
I’m not a linguist, but that’s apparently called a resultative adjective.
Oh yes… quite so. I’d forgotten about that usage (although I would probably have said “from a time long gone.”
Court martial.
Oh yes, there are a good number of set phrases (mostly legal and administrative) borrowed from French that preserve the French order. The only one I can think of that is productive is general: governor general, solicitor general, postmaster general, surgeon general, director general, secretary general, …
Akimbo is another. It’s always “arms akimbo,” not “akimbo arms.”
Hey, I once stayed at the Akimbo Arms.
The service was terrible.