first class products

[Nucleara]

Ms Adams: Yes, you're right. They ARE excellent clients. Unfortunately, they aren't pleased with the merchandise we are sending them.
Mr Gilder: How can that be? We always provide first class products.

Hello

From the dialogue above, I was wondering whether the word "first class" is an adjective or a noun. In the case of adjective I think it should be a hypen (-) existing between first and class, and I also think it is an adjective. What's correct ?

Thanks

 

[Copyright]

It's an adjective and I would hyphenate it here. But I wouldn't hyphenate First Class cabin, for instance. Many airlines capitalize the names of their cabin classes and I don't think the hyphen is required for associated tickets, lounges and cabins.

Which is the long way of saying the hyphen rule is somewhat flexible. I tend to base my choices on reading ease and understandability.

 

[entangledbank]

In that position, it can't be decided. However, when it's in the predicate, it seems more like a compound adjective: Their products are first(-)class. This distinguishes it from clearly syntactic complexes like: Their products are of/in the first class. Where the two parts are unquestionably separate adjective + noun, you can't use the first method: Their products are largest size.

For this reason I treat 'first-class' as a compound adjective, and hyphenate it in all positions; but usage is infinitely variable. There is no agreement about it.

 

[Nucleara]

Ok, thank you very much to Copyright and entangledbank!