Term for things like “naughty step” where the step is not what is naughty

Question

Can anyone remind me of the grammatical term for the apparent misapplication of an attributive adjective, as in the phrase "the naughty step" (where it is not the step itself that is naughty but the person consigned to it)?

Answer 1

It's a form of anthimeria, conversion or functional shift, though in this case it's a double case:

1. First the adjective naughty is used to form a noun, meaning those who are naughty.

2. Then this noun is used to modify a noun, much as an adjective would be, meaning something whose purpose is dealing with those who are naughty.

I can't think of any term specifically for an anthimeria that results in the same form, and since adjective → noun conversions are common enough in English, and noun → adjective so common as to barely count as conversions at all, even the double form doesn't strike me as that remarkable, compared to other cases.

There are two interesting features though. The first is that we can see it is being treated more like a noun-adjunct than an adjective by trying to use it predicatively:

Go and sit on the naughty step!

*Go and sit on the step that is naughty!

This also changes adjective order:

The wooden naughty step.

*The naughty wooden step.

We generally put judgements before material, and material before qualifiers or modifying nouns, so the former makes sense, but the latter suggests we are using naughty in its more common adjectival meaning, and the wooden step needs a spanking.

Answer 2

I don't know a single "technical term" for exactly this, but it looks like a "two-stage" process:

1: Adjectival naughty is treated as an adjectival noun:
an Adjective can sometimes function as a Noun; the young, the rich, etc. (the naughty [ones], here).

2: That "intermediate" noun form is then treated as a noun adjunct:
an optional noun that modifies another noun.

In short, it doesn't seem strictly correct to describe the process as "misapplication of an attributive adjective", because the original adjectival sense of "naughty" has already been supplanted by the derived noun sense before recycling as an adjective with somewhat different applicability.