English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is a more general context but just to give an example of my question:
Why is it written as Justice League and not as League of Justice? I am a spanish speaker and in spanish it is "Liga de la Justicia", so for me it should the second one but it is not. OF course, there are other examples of my concern but that is just to show one (I can't think of some other example right now).
The writer chose the title Justice League instead of League of Justice because (per StoneyB) it is a shortened version of the original name of the comic book, which was Justice League of America.
Justice League and League of Justice have exactly the same meaning. We also say Apple tree in preference to tree of apple(s), perhaps because the shorter expression is more concise (or less "klunky"!)
From a grammatical standpoint, the word justice here is a noun adjunct. It is common in English to use a noun as an adjective to modify another noun. This is sometimes called an attributive noun, and it always appears in the prenomial position, before the noun it modifies. This Wikipedia article explains the noun adjunct in depth.
Other examples in English are:
† Although this phrase is very commonly used as an exemplar of the noun adjunct, a spirited discussion of this particular phrase here raises interesting questions.
