Adjectival noun

An adjectival noun is a noun formed from an adjective. This is done i rst and foremost with adjectives referring to male and female beings. You can express, for example, ‘a blind man’ in one of two ways, either as ein blinder Mann or as ein Blinder, where the adjective is capitalized and the noun is understood. Likewise with ‘a blind woman’, i.e. eine blinde Frau or eine Blinde.

And in the plural ‘blind people’ can be expressed as Blinde, where ‘people’ is understood. But being in fact adjectives where the following noun is implied, these adjectival nouns are inflected like adjectives, which means that all the above examples may change when preceded by the definite article, e.g. der Blinde (the blind man), die Blinde (the blind woman), die Blinden (the blind).

 In the plural we do something similar in English, i.e. the blind, the poor, the living etc. Such nouns are derived from a limited number of adjectives on the whole. Quite a number of such adjectives are derived from past participles (marked with an asterisk) and some from present participles (marked with two asterisks); here is a representative list: