[Jordan1999]

Sleep beneath your beautiful

These lyrics make absolute no sense

[unique]

it's probably because you have the wrong lyrics. the right ones make more sense

[misslibertine]

Originally Posted by Jordan1999

Sleep beneath your beautiful

These lyrics make absolute no sense

As much as I dislike that song, it'll make more sense once you Google the right lyrics.

[KieranDS]

It's "see", not "sleep".

[sjp07]

Even with the right lyrics, the OP is right. Beautiful is not a noun so you can't have a beautiful. You can have beauty, though.

[3 $pirit]

They would do if you actually heard/looked up the right lyrics lol.

[AdzPower]

See beneath your beautiful doesnt make sense either.
Dreadful song btw, bland and boring, with vocals reminiscent of two elephants trying to murder one another.

[misslibertine]

Originally Posted by AdzPower

See beneath your beautiful doesnt make sense either.
Dreadful song btw, bland and boring, with vocals reminiscent of two elephants trying to murder one another.

Oh thank goodness for you. All I hear from other people is how "beautiful" and "moving" it is Makes me wonder if we're listening to the same song.

Not to mention the "your" lyric confusion. "Beneath your beautiful" - your beautiful what?

[Kanzi]

Actually nouns are an open lexical category if we're getting into linguistics... You can make a noun out of anything and so long as it's understood semantically (not grammatically), then it's fine, for example:

'Stretch' can be a verb but it is also a noun. "He stretched" or "He swam three stretches of the pool".

Just a matter of semantic flexibility really, so whilst they may not make grammatical sense in terms of prescriptive 'Proper English', they're definitely okay to use 'beautiful' as a noun.

Song's still shit though.

[StratusSphere]

I thought it was beneath you're beautiful, as in, you are beautiful...?

[sjp07]

Originally Posted by Kanzi

Actually nouns are an open lexical category if we're getting into linguistics... You can make a noun out of anything and so long as it's understood semantically (not grammatically), then it's fine, for example:

'Stretch' can be a verb but it is also a noun. "He stretched" or "He swam three stretches of the pool".

Just a matter of semantic flexibility really, so whilst they may not make grammatical sense in terms of prescriptive 'Proper English', they're definitely okay to use 'beautiful' as a noun.

Song's still shit though.

The word stretch is classified as a noun and verb depending on the way you use it, just like you can make nouns into adjectives. The noun he was looking for was beauty. He used the adjective beautiful. If he wanted to use that, he should have said Beneath you're beautiful. You can do that with any word, but there is only one correct way. Even if the word is spelled exactly the same, the other words in the sentence signal why exactly it is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. possessive words never come before an adjective without a noun following after. Your is possessive, beautiful is an adjective(at all times, it can NEVER be a noun. you have to change the word to beauty for it to be. -ful tells you clearly that is is an adjective and only an adjective) so therefore for the phrase to be correct a noun must be added or the word needs to be changed to beauty.

[sjp07]

Originally Posted by StratusSphere

I thought it was beneath you're beautiful, as in, you are beautiful...?

nope. that's why people are confused.

[walterwhite]

Originally Posted by sjp07

nope. that's why people are confused.

Is the official lyric 'your'? Where has that been printed?

[Smerph]

I have a horrible feeling someone made a stupid grammatical mistake when they wrote this song and, rather than admit the mistake and change the lyric, they kept up a pretence that it was deliberate.

To her credit, Lily Allen at least changed "Who'd Of Known" to "Who'd Have Known" when people politely told her this was incorrect.

This is obviously supposed to be "you're" and I'm disgusted it's slipped through. It's bad enough millions are spelling it incorrectly on Twitter, Facebook and countless forum threads, but to have a mainstream music release perpetuate it is even worse.

[Ant L]

Originally Posted by walterwhite

Is the official lyric 'your'? Where has that been printed?

It's in the song title...

[sjp07]

Originally Posted by Smerph

I have a horrible feeling someone made a stupid grammatical mistake when they wrote this song and, rather than admit the mistake and change the lyric, they kept up a pretence that it was deliberate.

To her credit, Lily Allen at least changed "Who'd Of Known" to "Who'd Have Known" when people politely told her this was incorrect.

This is obviously supposed to be "you're" and I'm disgusted it's slipped through. It's bad enough millions are spelling it incorrectly on Twitter, Facebook and countless forum threads, but to have a mainstream music release perpetuate it is even worse.

I'm pretty sure it was intentional, but it could be like the time will I am spelled tasty ' T to the A to the S T E Y girl you tasty'

[sjp07]

By the way, while we are on the subject of things that make absolutely no sense, OP, your title makes no sense. I think you meant absoluteLY no sense.

[Littlegreen42]

He is describing her beautiful skin as a noun...

[Kanzi]

Originally Posted by sjp07

The word stretch is classified as a noun and verb depending on the way you use it, just like you can make nouns into adjectives. The noun he was looking for was beauty. He used the adjective beautiful. If he wanted to use that, he should have said Beneath you're beautiful. You can do that with any word, but there is only one correct way. Even if the word is spelled exactly the same, the other words in the sentence signal why exactly it is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. possessive words never come before an adjective without a noun following after. Your is possessive, beautiful is an adjective(at all times, it can NEVER be a noun. you have to change the word to beauty for it to be. -ful tells you clearly that is is an adjective and only an adjective) so therefore for the phrase to be correct a noun must be added or the word needs to be changed to beauty.

Silly. I'll just take my MA in Descriptive Linguistics with me and walk out the door then. I'm trying to dumb it down so it's easy to understand - not everyone on here is an academic so to write an essay on the fluidity of lexical categories would be deliriously boring and confusing. Yes 'stretch' was a bad example. What about eternal?

Let's go again:

Nouns are an open class. Meaning you can add whatever word you like and use it as a noun. So long as it's understood as a noun semantically, grammatical 'correctness' doesn't even come into it. In the first instance of a word being used in an usual way e.g. 'bungalowed' as a word describing get completely off your face drunk, it is called a nonse-word (yes this is a linguistic term), and every instance in which it is used by other people henceforth makes it a 'proper' word. It'll most likely be in the OED as a noun next year*.

Semantics could say that to use beautiful as an noun makes it an object - a cold object that can be removed as if moving a wall, which is the connotative meaning of the song. What he's saying is that the beautiful isn't a personality characteristic - it's a sort of bolt-on that's there whenever she goes out and meets other people, closing off the real her by simply putting on a beautiful.

Don't be such a boring prescriptivist.

* It already is in the OED as a noun:

"That which is beautiful; the beautiful n. the name given to the general notion which the mind forms of the assemblage of qualities which constitute beauty"

[sjp07]

Bungalowed is an adjective, not a noun. You can make it a noun by changing it's spelling, bungalowed as is, is not a noun. Look at what you said the definition is. DESCRIBING getting completely off you face drunk. A noun can not describe anything. It just simply exists. Adverbs and adjectives are descriptors. Beautiful is also not a noun. Nothing with the suffix -full can ever be a noun unless it is a proper noun, like a dog named Beautiful. If you listen to the song, it is clearly meant to say beneath your beauty.

[tracystapes]

I will never understand One Direction's "You can't go to bed without a cup of tea, maybe that's why you talk in your sleep"

[sjp07]

Originally Posted by tracystapes

I will never understand One Direction's "You can't go to bed without a cup of tea, maybe that's why you talk in your sleep"

lol wasnt Ed really young when he wrote that or something?

[tracystapes]

Originally Posted by sjp07

lol wasnt Ed really young when he wrote that or something?

I hope so!

[benana93]

I think it's quite clever. Besides, I shouldn't imagine Labrinth or Emeli care if some people on the internet are getting wound up about it, the song got to #1 after all. I thought it was really bland and boring when I first heard it but it's grown on me since the X Factor performance.

[Kanzi]

Originally Posted by sjp07

Bungalowed is an adjective, not a noun. You can make it a noun by changing it's spelling, bungalowed as is, is not a noun. Look at what you said the definition is. DESCRIBING getting completely off you face drunk. A noun can not describe anything. It just simply exists. Adverbs and adjectives are descriptors. Beautiful is also not a noun. Nothing with the suffix -full can ever be a noun unless it is a proper noun, like a dog named Beautiful. If you listen to the song, it is clearly meant to say beneath your beauty.

You're arguing with a Master of Arts with Honours in Descriptive Linguistics.

I used 'bungalowed' as an example because adjectives are also an open class. Bungalowed is a noun-adjective lexical transformation. Beautiful is an adjective-noun lexical transformation.

Let it the **** go.