nouns - "Car sale" vs "Cars sale"


I have always thought that the latter: Cars sale, is incorrect; yet Google returns almost the same number of results for both!


My concern is about Rule extraction and Rules extraction to be precise; for a Chapter title!


P.S. Clearly, we are selling many cars (or extracting many rules); not one!



Answer



In your examples, car and rule are noun adjuncts: nouns used as adjectives. Wikipedia notes:



Noun adjuncts were traditionally mostly singular (e.g. "trouser press") except when there were lexical restrictions (e.g. "arms race"), but there is a recent trend towards more use of plural ones, especially in UK English. Many of these can also be and/or were originally interpreted and spelled as plural possessives....



Car sale and rule extraction are both traditionally correct. Rules extraction fits the recent trend, but cars sale would be problematic: cars' sale (the selling of cars) doesn't mean the same thing as car sale (a discount on cars).


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