daynoun

Daynoun is a proposed linguistic term for a noun that designates a day or a day-related time unit. The term is not widely used in standard grammars but appears in online glossaries and speculative linguistics discussions to categorize a subset of temporal nouns that anchor discourse to a specific calendar day or a recurring day. Daynouns can be simple, such as common time nouns (holiday, workday, weekday, weekend) that refer to a span within which activities occur, or proper names of days and observances used as nominal referents (Friday, Christmas). They can also form compounds that foreground a particular day in a sentence, such as payday or the Tuesday meeting, where the noun denotes the day in which the event occurs.

Etymology: daynoun is a portmanteau of day and noun. It is used in meta-linguistic discussions to discuss how language marks time. It is not an entry in major dictionaries, and many linguists would classify these terms under broader categories such as temporal nouns or calendrical expressions.

Usage and notes: The term is mainly of interest in studies of lexical categorization, language pedagogy, and creative writing where analysts draw attention to the day-centered semantics of certain words. Critics argue that coining new labels can obscure description if not widely adopted, so daynoun is primarily a working label rather than a standard grammatical category.

See also: temporal noun, calendrical expression, lexical class.