Peter Gallagher’s latest post is the third or fourth article that I have read this week to allude to Gareth Evans‘ quip that the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation is “four adjective in search of a noun.” Regardless of opinions about APEC policies, analysts ought to stop repeating this grammatical error.

Asia is a noun. Cooperation is also a noun. Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation might be a clumsy or meaningless title (perhaps it should have been Asia Pacific Economic Cooperative?), but two of the four words are nouns.

Moreover, APEC hyphenates its name, so it reads “Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.” In that case there are three words, and one of them is a noun.