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Some grammarians believe that the use of the noun “Democrat” as an adjective is ungrammatical.[40] Jean Yates suggests that the use of a noun as a modifier of another noun is not grammatically incorrect in modern English in the formation of a compound noun, e.g., “shoe store,” “school bus,” “peace movement,” etc.[41] However, these tend to be cases in which there is no way to make the noun into an appropriate adjective (ie: “schooly” is not a word) or where the adjective simply doesn’t work (a “shoed store” implies that the store itself has been shoed, and while it may be peaceful, the peace movement is about promoting peace, not about its promotors simply being peaceful.) This is not the case with Democrat. Democratic, as the adjective form of Democrat, is appropriate and conveys the proper meaning when used as applied to the party itself, the voters, etcetera. The use of nouns as adjectives is part of a broader linguistic trend, according to language expert Ruth Walker, who claims, “We’re losing our inflections—the special endings we use to distinguish between adjectives and nouns, for instance. There’s a tendency to modify a noun with another noun rather than an adjective. Some may speak of “the Ukraine election” rather than ‘the Ukrainian election’ or ‘the election in Ukraine,’ for instance. It’s ‘the Iraq war’ rather than ‘the Iraqi war,’ to give another example.”[42]

In American history, many parties were named by their opponents (Federalists, Loco-Focos, Know Nothings, Populists, Dixiecrats), including the Democrats themselves, as the Federalists in the 1790s used “Democratic Party” as a term of ridicule.[43]