I saw this in the subject line of a spam email message a week ago.

But this statement means nothing except for the positive implication that the spammer wants to give it.

Someone usually says a statement such as “It is a prestige product.” to tell the listener that “it” is a high-prestige product.

But the noun “prestige” by itself has no positive or negative value.

Can you imagine someone, such as a non-native-English speaker, first reading or hearing “A prestige watch is part of your image.”?

This statement would be meaningless to such a person.

The noun “prestige” must be hyphenated with an adjective to form a compound adjective that can indicate the value of the noun — in this case, “watch” — that the compound adjective modifies.

In contrast to the inherently meaningless statement “A prestige watch is part of your image.”, here are some meaningful statements:

• “A high-prestige watch should be part of your image.”
• “A low-prestige watch should not be part of your image.”
• “A prestigious watch should be part of your image.”

I believe that the use of the noun “prestige” in place of the adjective “prestigious” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to speak or write the two-syllable, eight-letter noun than it is to speak or write the three-syllable, eleven-letter adjective.

So respond with a “Huh?” the next time that someone says to you a statement such as “It is a prestige product.”, and see what happens.