Is “honorific” a noun or an adjective, and what precisely does it mean?

Question

Are honorifics things you add to a word/sentence to raise the level of politeness/respect?

Or are honorifics different levels of politeness/respect of words/sentences?

Or do you add things to a word/sentence to make it honorific?

I understand how “honorifics” work, but the precise name/description of this grammatical principle has been very unclear to me in my studies. Different credible resources seem to use different meanings and as different parts of speech. (Ex: Chapters in books called “Honorifics”, but highly upvoted posts here saying a sentence is in the past tense and “honorific”.)

Answer 1

Honorifics _HON

Are honorifics things you add to a word/sentence to raise the level of politeness/respect?

Yes.

Are honorifics different levels of politeness/respect of words/sentences?

No. Should be called “honorific levels.”

Do you add things to a word/sentence to make it honorific?

Right. “The things” can be

• postpositions
  • “께” and “께서”
• use of certain words
  • “선생님” instead of “선생”
  • “아버님” instead of “아버지” _{See the usage note in the comments below.}
  • “진지” for “밥”
  • “말씀” for “말”
  • dependent noun “분” for “사람”
  • “그분” for “그 사람”
  • “저분” for “저 사람”
  • “저” for “나”
  • “저희” for “우리”
  • “여쭈다” for “묻다”
  • “드시다” for “먹다”
  • dependent noun “님”
• suffixes
  • “-님”
• or conjugations
  • “알았어요” (ending “-요”) or “알았습니다” (ending “-습니다”) for “알았다”
  • “보시다” (conjugation “-시-” to the verb “보다”)

. These things slightly humble yourself or raise others to do their job. And expressions with such gizmos (“honorifics”_{as a noun}) are said to be honorific_{as an adjective}.

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Is the English word “honorific” a noun or an adjective?

Both; a sentence is honorific^ADJ when having honorifics^NOUN, but never be an honorific^NOUN.