Originally Posted by
itsme
Present participle? Not an adjective, or gerund? "Savings" isn't a participle when one is speaking of what they have set aside for retirement or other purposes, is it?
"Savings" is ok if you're using it as a noun (such as what you've set aside). So I suppose you could speak of your daylight savings account.
But "Daylight Saving" here is not a noun; it acts an adjective modifying time. What kind of time is it? Why, it's a daylight saving kind of time! It's not a "post writing" time nor a "grammar correcting" time.
Spelling and grammar
The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time.
Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Because of this, it would be more accurate to refer to DST as daylight-saving time. Similar examples would be a mind-expanding book or a man-eating tiger. Saving is used in the same way as saving a ball game, rather than as a savings account.