For my entire career (going on thirty years now), I've seen the horrible adjective "detail." As in "detail design." Funny, I always thought it was a noun.

Why can't these people use proper English, and call it a "detailed design"?

Was this ongoing atrocity on the language deliberate, and is there some rationale for it? Or is it an accident, a result of the fact that when someone says "give me a detailed design," the two "d"s run together, and the engineers dutifully wrote down what they heard--"detail design"--and it's become so embedded in the industry that it's as impossible to remove as roaches in a Haitian kitchen (sorry, had trouble coming up with a PC simile there...)?

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am going through an Orion schedule (which is apparently going to slip), line by (eye-crossing) line. Why do you ask?

Is that design in detail or design of detail? These details matter.

Well, given your post earlier today on preferring "Democrat" party (a noun) to "Democratic" party (an adjective), all I can say is, "Kettle, Pot calling on line three."

:-P

Sorry to disappoint, Jane, but "Republican" is a noun as well...

In the aerospace industry "detail design" means design of "detail parts" (which are individual parts, as opposed to assemblies). For example, a "bracket detail" means just the bracket, while a "bracket assembly" means the bracket detail plus the clips, platenuts, threaded inserts, etc. that get permanently attached to it. Mind you, most assemblies are also designed in the detail design phase too, but I'm pretty sure that's how the term "detail design" originated.

The "detail design" phase (design of details and assemblies) usually comes after the "preliminary design" phase (system-level design) , which comes after the "conceptual design" phase (mainly configuration, concept of operations, and similar work).

Mike

In the aerospace industry "detail design" means design of "detail parts"...

And this is a rational (and English) response to my post how? It certainly doesn't explain how a noun became an adjective, which was the point of my post.

Its not Aerospace and its not just the US, they were detail drawings and versions there of when I did my time in a design shop.

Isn't it really irritating how more and more people verb words?

Rand wrote:

> And this is a rational (and English) response to my post how?

Ah, the famous Simbergian snarkiness. Where would we be without it? You never really grasped the concept of charm, did you?

> It certainly doesn't explain how a noun became an adjective,
> which was the point of my post.

Nouns are often adjectives, especially in engineering. "Spar assembly", "stringer detail", and "engine keel" are all common terms in the aerospace industry. So are "wing design", "fuselage design", and "pump design" (in case you can't get the point unless it's in the form of "xx design").

Mike

How about when words are remade using a prefix like the word "pro-active". How can you be pro-active? Is that like being active only more so? Personally, I am never pro-active, just active.

In this case "detail" may be an infinitive verb. If this order is given as part of a list in point form, then they left out the definite article "the", and are telling to you "Detail the design".

"Detail" is being used as a noun, in the sense of "unitary part which goes into a larger assembly".

And the phrase "detail design", meaning the process of designing and drafting blueprints for these details, has been used since the nineteenth century.

Rand, you don't win this round.

Er, not to pile on, but the use of a noun as an adjective is ubiquitous in English.

One of the more amusing aspects of English, however, is that the order in which the words in a phrase like this matters a lot: a "cat house" is not at all the same as a "house cat". I've heard this can cause trouble for certain ESL speakers in whose native language word order is less important in determining meaning.

I'm not trying to "win." I know it's a lost cause. I'm just ranting.

Then there is the usage common in the military, to be on detail. To be assigned to some task.

The dictionary has 'detail' as a noun, transitive verb or intransitive verb.

And the phrase "detail design", meaning the process of designing and drafting blueprints for these details, has been used since the nineteenth century.

Tradition isn't a good excuse for deliberate obfuscation. That's what gets Mars probes pancaked.

the phrase "detail design", meaning the process of designing and drafting blueprints for these details, has been used since the nineteenth century.

In that case, it's being used as a verb. I'm talking about the word "design" as a noun, with "detail" as an adjective, which is the way most people (wrongly, in my opinion) use it. I still think my theory (that someone wrote it down wrong because they only heard one "d") is the best explanation.

The dictionary has 'detail' as a noun, transitive verb or intransitive verb.

And not an adjective.

What bothers me even more than grammar -- English is known for its flexibility, being the union of at least two different language groups -- is the poor communication I've seen entirely too often in the field. Poor grammar and spelling are but two aspects of this.

In the 1990s I worked for a group at Goddard attached to the supercomputer center. One of the key tasks of the group was communication between the user community and the center. They were initially thrilled to get me since I was actually a writer who had been published in mainstream publications. OK -- it was more a hobby, but still I had proven I could write. They told me one of my tasks would be to take the minutes of the monthly user committee meeting. The first month I was there no one from my group was allowed to attend the meeting. The users were so angry at the poor performance of the group that they wanted a special meeting to air their grievances without the group being present. The second month I got a bit of insight into the group's processes and why the users might be angry. Before I came the way they did the minutes was to have a company secretary -- who did not understand the subject matter -- come to the meeting and do a first draft. Then management would go over the minutes correcting her mistakes. I put up with this procedure exactly once when I saw what a poor job this secretary did. I started doing the first draft from my own notes thereafter. What were the results? I eventually got phone calls from as far away as NASA HQ telling me what a wonderful job I was doing.

For what it's worth, I just typed this out in a very few minutes. Maybe I should start a blog of my own in addition to commenting on other people's.

There's a simple explanation. Linguaciding is fun.

...but still I had proven I could write.

'proven' or 'proved'?

proven

Actually, from reading the above posts, it actually makes sense, assuming that it's being used correctly.

"Here is the design of the assembly, please provide a drawing of the assembly." = "Here is the assembly design. Please provide an assembly drawing."

Now, substitute "detail" for "assembly", and you get "Here is the design of the detail. Please provide a drawing of the detail." = "Here is the detail design. Please provide a detail drawing."

Detail, in this case, is a noun that means, as someone else mentioned "the minutiae parts and pieces at the smallest level of assembly."

What bugs me more is that people seem to think that the phrase "to be" is optional nowadays. "The driveway needs shoveled. The lawn needs mowed." No, the driveway needs TO BE shoveled, and the lawn needs TO BE mowed. THAT drives me nuts more than most of the other travesties that have befallen the english language lately.

As others have said, what you're ranting about
is common usage. "detail design" = "the design of
the detail[s]", just as "system design" = "design
of the system"... It's not uncommon for nouns to
be thus "adjectived".

(Be glad this isn't French, where adjectives get
"nouned" all the time: "le vieux", literally "the
old [one]", etc...)

-dave w

As others have said, what you're ranting about
is common usage.

I know it's common usage. I've been seeing it my entire career. That's why I'm ranting about it.

There are a lot of things that are common usage that are just wrong (like the inability to spell "lose" and "loose" or "dribble" for "drivel," etc.). Just because it's become an engineerism, doesn't make it good English. It grates on my ear (and more importantly, when written, my eye, since it's hard to hear the difference when spoken).

In engineering, as in most non-political fields, one can reach the highest levels and still have a hard time communicating. The difference is that engineers usually don't have editors or speechwriters to clean things up before they go public.

I spend a lot of time at various major aerospace facilities. I once considered leaving anonymous notes explaining how to use hyphens in compound modifiers, but decided it would be a waste of time. In this business, we love to write jawbreakers like "rigid body dynamic derived day of launch loss of clearance study."