Thread: рабочий - unusual ending for a noun?

Usually that's how only adjectives end, I think this is the first noun I see that ends like that. Am I correct in my observation it's quite unusual?

No, and it's not a noun grammatically, but an adjective. See for example рабочий день - working day.

Another example where you would expect a noun is "host" (as in talk show), where the Russian word is ведущий, something like "he who leads". It happens rather frequently. You may have noticed the word for "weekend" or "days off work", выходные, which is also just an adjective in plural. These words decline like adjectives, not nouns.

But in everyday speech they're used like a noun would, in terms of sentence-construction?

It is quite a big class of nouns - "adjectival nouns".
They are derived from adjectives, and morphologically behave as adjectives (i.e., they keep adjectival endings in all their forms).
But syntactically (i.e. in terms of sentence-construction) they are nouns.

There are many examples in addition to what was mentioned above:
столовая - dining-room;
парикмахерская - barber's shop;
русский (русская) - a Russian (man or woman) - it can be used both as an adjective and as a noun;
животное - animal;
насекомое - insect;
Вселенная - Universe;
прохожий - a passer-by;
часовой - a sentry

etc. etc.

BTW, many Russian family names are of this sort: Лев Толстой (compare: Я читаю Льва Толстого).

It is a "substantive" - an adjective that plays role of a noun. There are many such words, some of them exist in parallel with corresponding adjectives (борзая, гнедой, верховой, дозорный, военный, ванная, кривая, плясовая) - so called "motivated substantives". Others nowadays exist only as nouns (вселенная, городничий, запятая, мостовая, портной, родословная). They inflect as adjectives but are used like nouns.

In English situation is very much the same but as soon as there are not much inflections in English, nobody pays attention.

And here is something tasty for you
мороженое - ice-cream; пирожное - a sort of sponge-cake.

One explanation, 9 examples, and Bob's your uncle

Thanks a bunch ^_^

This is the way of creating new words we call 'translition from one part of speech to another' or just 'translition' (переход). Nouns can be created such way.
For instance:
Спальная - sleeping room (from спальная комната - комната, где спят)
Шампанское - champagne (from шампанское вино)
Рабочий - worker (exactly this one was formed somewhere in XIX-early XX century from рабочий человек

"Следующий!" (Next!) Very common. Use of these kinds of adjectives as nouns is common in some literature.

текущий, будущий, бывший as nouns.

Originally Posted by Seraph

"Следующий!" (Next!) Very common. Use of these kinds of adjectives as nouns is common in some literature.
текущий, будущий, бывший as nouns.

I can only imagine the word ‘бывший’ as a noun (with the meaning ‘ex-husband’ / ‘ex-boyfriend’). The other words (‘следующий’, ‘текущий’, ‘будущий’) are not used as nous, IMHO.

Well, you can use any adjective without a noun, e.g. «Последний был лучшим» — “The last one was the best one”. But, I think, this is not the same as ‘рабочий’, ‘мороженое’ etc. In such phrases adjectives remain adjectives.

Originally Posted by Soft sign

The other words (‘следующий’, ‘текущий’, ‘будущий’) are not used as nous, IMHO.

Oops, I've forgot the word «будущее» (‘the future’). It is a noun.

Текущий = current. следующий = next/next one. Not so?

Bob gave a very clear and detailed explanation:

1) such words behave MORPHOLOGICALLY as adjectives
(i.e. they decline and have genders and number just like adjectives),

2) however, they function SYNTACTICALLY as nouns
(i.e. they can be the subject of the sentence, or the object/complement of the verb, just like nouns).

Why so?

There is a process, both in English and in Russian, when adjectives become nouns/substantives, because they lose their initial DESCRIBING function and develop a NAMING function:
Спальная комната (describing a room) ---> спальная (naming a room),
Рабочий класс (describing a social stratum) ---> рабочий (naming a person).

This process is called "substantivization of adjectives" - субстантивация прилагательных, т.е. Развитие прилагательными предметного значения и переход их в категорию существительных:
-- These substantivized adjectives NO LONGER DESCRIBE something,
they NAME something like nouns!
-- These substantivized adjectives NO LONGER answer the question "какой? Какая? Какое?",
but they answer the question: "ЧТО? КТО?"

English also has substantivized adjectives:
-- Daniel Boone met a bunch of THE Indian BRAVES (from the adjective "brave"),
-- THE FRENCH (THE RUSIANS, THE CHINESE) will have their elections next Sunday.
-- THE RICH and THE POOR,
-- THE WHITES and THE SAVAGES...

I hope it helps. Blessings to you in mastering Russian!

Originally Posted by Seraph

Текущий = current. следующий = next/next one. Not so?

I'm not sure. Could you provide a sample sentence where ‘текущий’ is a noun syntactically?

Originally Posted by Seraph

Текущий = current. следующий = next/next one. Not so?

I don't think so. Sometimes nouns can be omitted and implied (next=next X) but adjective still remain pure adjective. The difference with substantive is that "what next exactly" absolutely depends on the exact context and situation only. While "рабочий" as noun is always "worker".

"next" still remain a property of some object, not its definition.

You can add a noun after that adjective "next please" = "next person, please" and it is OK. If you can't do it naturally - there is a substantive.

It is easy to check - in vocabulary.

Thank you very much for correcting me! I appreciate it a lot.

Originally Posted by Yulia65

English also has substantivized adjectives:
-- Daniel Boone met a bunch of THE Indian BRAVES (from the adjective "brave"),
-- THE FRENCH (THE RUSIANS, THE CHINESE) will have their elections next Sunday.
-- THE RICH and THE POOR,
-- THE WHITES and THE SAVAGES...

I hope it helps. Blessings to you in mastering Russian!

In English it's a different process, I think. English loves conversion, but not from adjectives to nouns. Russian has only one productive way of conversion - from adjectives to nouns.