El wáter

After you’ve been in Chile for a time, you’ll begin to notice names for objects that consist solely of an English modifier, such as an adjective.  Un pérsonal, for example, refers to a Walkman-type portable stereo, and el living refers to the living room in a home.

These terms may seem odd, until you realize where they probably come from: the shortening of a standard English phrase using a Spanish grammar rule.

In English, for instance, I could shorten the term broom closet to closet and top hat to hat.  In both cases I’m making the name less descriptive, but it’s still accurate; a broom closet is a type of closet and a top hat is a kind of hat.  Removing the first word, which in English is generally a modifier, doesn’t change the basic identity of what I’m naming.  I could not, on the other hand, removed the second word and refer to those objects as a broom or a top if I wanted anyone to understand me.

In Spanish, we see the opposite: a casa blanca is a type of casa, and azúcar flor is a kind of azúcar.  If I want to shorten those terms I need to keep the first word and get rid of the second.  So what happens if I apply this remove-the-second-word rule to two-word names imported from English?  The following weirdness:

In all of these examples the modifier is left by itself to identify the object or concept, which of course makes them sound ridiculous if you export them back into English.

Any other examples?  Let’s see them in the comments.