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In the phrase "Good afternoon" what type of word is 'afternoon'?

I've argued that it was a temporal pronoun, but a colleague googled the term "temporal pronoun" and came up with almost nothing, so I'm now convinced that is an incorrect description.

Is there a category that succinctly describes the temporal part of traditional greeting such as "Good morning", "Good day", "Good night"?

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    Where's the pro- from, please?
    – Kris
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 11:35
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    I think afternoon. by itself, is a temporal noun; good afternoon is a phrasal exclamation.
    – Kris
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 11:47
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    @DanBron I don't think deictic noun has anything to do with the expression at hand.
    – Kris
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 12:00
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    @MattFellows Ah, so you were bitten by Muphry's Law? Well, I suppose they call it a law for a reason. (No, I did not misspell Murphy's; follow the link.)
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 12:26
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    Day names are calendric, not deictic; Tuesday is still Tuesday whether it's today or not. Check out Fillmore's Deixis lectures.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 14:22

1 Answer 1

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Afternoon would be considered as a common compound noun, but different periods of the day don't classify under one category of nouns, though they all seem to be common nouns.

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