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While browsing a set of lecture slides, I encountered this line:

Catch up/overtake rate

in which overtake rate looks odd to me. As far as I know, a verb may act as an adjective in a couple different ways, e.g., in its gerund (present participle) or past participle forms.

But this line takes the imperative form of the verb (so its ”bare” or to-less infinitive) and uses it as an adjective (or noun?) to modify the noun rate.

So, I'm just wondering whether the lecturer had meant to write overtaking rate here and this was just a mistake, or whether overtake rate is indeed a legit piece of composition in English.

Background

In space dynamics, when two objects are in non-co-orbital circular orbits, the one which is rotating in the lower orbit overtakes the one in the higher orbit because the former’s velocity is higher than that of the latter. The lecturer tries to call this phenomenon its overtake rate.

So the question is, can overtake, which is listed in the dictionary only as a verb, ever be used as a noun and/or adjective the way it appears to be being used here?

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  • Some context would help.
    – Old Brixtonian
    Commented Sep 16, 2019 at 0:15
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    @Roboticist What aparente001 means is that before asking a question here, it is expected that you first consult some appropriate standard works to try to find the answer yourself; and when you then ask, you should include where you looked and what you found (or didn’t find) that left you still questioning. In this case, it is intuitively clear to me that overtake is a noun, not a verb, but I cannot blame you for not being able to confirm this easily, because several dictionaries (M-W, Oxford-Lexico, even Wiktionary) do not have it as a noun at all. OED does, but that’s paywalled.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Sep 16, 2019 at 9:45
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    That is precisely the question – what does it mean for the usableness of a word that most dictionaries don’t list it? Zero-derivation is an extremely productive pattern in English, and to me personally, deriving a noun overtake from the verb is perfectly fine and quite obvious – but it may not be to others.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Sep 16, 2019 at 10:33
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    Thank you for clarifying. No, "overtake" is not listed as a noun in the dictionaries I consulted (see for example thefreedictionary.com/overtake). However, English does allow some flexibility in certain circumstances. Consider, for example, the break even point.
    – aparente001
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 3:07
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    Can overtake be used as a noun? google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://…
    – mahmud k pukayoor
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 4:11

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Here's a crazy idea.

This is still a verb, not an adjective. It just happens to be modifying a noun. It can still take direct objects and do other verb tricks if you ask it nicely enough. (But these can end up sounding a bit odd, just like calling-people rates would.)

There are lots of times that the rate of VERBing gets called the VERB rate. And it doesn't happen with only rate alone. The rate of writing is the write rate. The rate of failing is the fail rate. The rate of passing is just the pass rate.

If people are always taking or giving a penny or two, you could have a take one rate, a take two rate, a give one rate, and a give two rate. That take one is not an adjective: you couldn't have a very take one rate or say that the rate is take one. Just as when you have a rate of giving two, that giving two bit is not a noun but a verb phrase because only verbs have direct objects, so too with a take two rate.

That's why you won't find a take two in the dictionary. It's not a noun, just an ad-hoc verb phrase modifying a noun phrase.

That's also why you shouldn't expect to find an overtake in the dictionary let alone an overtake quickly there for those rates of overtaking quickly if they get called overtake quickly rates.

The chance of working late versus that of quitting early might be the work late chance and quit early chance.

Sure, some of these come off sounding a bit casual or creative, and some verbs are going to resist it. But calling them verbs in modifier roles, not adjectives or nouns, makes it a whole lot easier to explain why you cannot have a very overtake early rate for a rate of overtaking early.

Can a verb phrase take on a modifier role?

Thinking things over a bit, he decided it could.

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  • Interesting, but these are always grey areas. 'That take one is not an adjective: you couldn't have a very take one rate or say that the rate is take one.' But we know that some recognised adjectives fail these tests, the classifying nuclear, chemical etc (although familiarity extends usage in common with that of other adjectives. Novel usages tend to be more restricted in distribution.) There's always argument over when/whether conversion has taken place. I've not seen any recent debate on whether 'steel' in 'steel bridge' is an adjective or a noun.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Sep 19, 2019 at 13:57
  • @EdwinAshworth Certainly overtake is not an adjective in overtake rate either, given that you can’t have a “very” overtake rate. That’s why it feels more like a verb to me, or maybe a verb that’s been nouned.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Oct 24, 2019 at 14:23
  • But (although it's probably considered well and truly nouned by now), nuclear is certainly a non-gradable etc adjective.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Oct 24, 2019 at 15:39

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