Colour as an adjective

[beanaseireann]

Please can you give me an example of the word colour as an adjective.
I know colourful is an adjective.

I don't follow. As you say, 'colourful' is an adjective. 'colour' is a noun or verb.

Do you mean as in 'colour chart' for instance? In that case 'colour' is an attributive noun. The names of colours are commonly used as adjectives.

A colour photograph, I guess, makes colour an adjective, or at least takes on the role of an adjective, I'm not sure it's different to footle's example though? Like a colour TV.

Thank you

pfwow - "colour photograph" is using colour as a noun to modify another noun (as in Footle's example).

You can see it's not an adjective because it won't function the way adjectives do...
comparatives: more colourful photo = OK, more colour photo = not OK
apply adverbs: intensely colourful photo = OK, intensely colour photo = ?
string together with other adjectives: colourful old photo = OK, colour old photo = no

A colour television ?

"beanaseireann

A colour television ?"

That's still an attributive noun/ a modified noun - it's simply using one noun to add detail to another noun.

It's great the way you can pile up nouns to modify a noun phrase - it's a well-known feature of British newspaper headlines:

Colour television licence increase plan minister resigns

That's a six-noun pile.

There's a really good thread here which uses chicken soup to discuss adjectives Vs noun modifiers, but one poster says

"Can the word in question be modified with an enhancer like too or very? Then it's an adjective. Otherwise it's an attributive modifier. (The assumption is we're asking if it's an adjective proper or a noun used attributively.)

In theFreeDictionary an adjective is:

The part of speech that modifies a noun or other substantive by limiting, qualifying, or specifying and distinguished in English morphologically by one of several suffixes, such as -able, -ous, -er, and -est, or syntactically by position directly preceding a noun or nominal phrase."

It's really true! Try it. You could have the brightest (adjective) colour (noun) but you can't have the colourest anything.

link

‘Colour televison’ is a compound noun. The first noun acts as an adjective but it isn’t.