What Are Compound Words

What Are Compound Words Compound words consist of two words which can be used independently, but when joined together as one word or with a hyphen, form a new word. The funny thing with this is it can be quite hard to spot compound words. Think about the word airport. It consists of two base words: air and port, but we are so used to using the word as one word, most of us dont really notice its a compound word. Closed Form Compound Words Airport is an example of a closed form compound word. The two words are joined together without a hyphen or a space. Some other examples of closed form compound words include: Baseball Windfall Extraordinary Metaphysical Worldwide Northwest Stockbroker Sailboat Railway Wildcat Birthday Open From Compound Words These words look a lot like two independent words, but they arent because they describe a single thing. Here are a few examples of open form compound words you are likely familiar with: Flight attendant Super tanker African American Light year Post office Real estate Truck driver Middle class Attorney general High school Vice president Think about it. If you took either the first or the second word out of the two-word combo, it would no longer mean the same thing. Is little sister a compound word? No, it isnt. Take the word little away, and you still have a sister. You both have the same parents. Now take flight away from flight attendant. Does it still mean the same thing? No, it doesnt. A flight attendant has a very specific job. An attendant can be any person who attends to your needs. It isnt even necessarily a job. As for the vice president, he or she may be happy to be promoted to president, but that hasnt happened. Hyphenated Compound Words Heres where it all gets rather tricky. Some hyphenated compounds are always hyphenated (jack-in-the-box) but others may be hyphenated on certain occasions and are not hyphenated at other times. Sometimes, you may hyphenate for clarity. For example: Old furniture salesman Old-furniture salesman In the first example, it isnt clear whether the salesman or the furniture are old. For all we know, the phrase may be describing an elderly salesman. Example two is clearer. We can see that the furniture is old, and we dont have to worry about offending the salesman by accidentally creating the wrong impression. To a certain extent, its a matter of frequency of usage. For example, we are so accustomed to used car salesmen, that we wouldnt even wonder whether the word used refers to the car or the guy. Now check this out: Example 1 She was a part-time teacher. The teacher worked part time. Example 2 It was a very high-speed chase. The chase was very high speed. High-speed and Part-time are known as modifiers. They modify nouns. When a modifier appears before a noun, you would hyphenate it. When it appears after the noun, you dont bother with hyphenating. Other modifiers that are sometimes hyphenated, and sometimes not: Five-yard-long Fire-resistant Short-term Good-looking Blue-grey Second-rate The decision of whether to hyphenate or not is based on the location of the noun these compound words modify. When Never to Use a Hyphen (plus exceptions) A word ending in ly will rarely form part of a hyphenated compound. Think about word combinations like: Newly minted Hotly contested But when you are using a whole phrase as an adjective, you might use hyphens all the same: The ever-so-slightly embarrassed salesman continued with his pitch. Compounds with prefixes such as pre, post or mid are usually used in the closed form: Postpartum Preeminent Midseason But there are masses of exceptions to this rule, so its best to check using a dictionary. If you arent able to check a dictionary, you can work around the issue. For instance, if youre not sure whether mid-June should be hyphenated, you could also say the middle of June. As a bonus, this helps with word count. Compounds That Always Have Hyphens You can be sure of these ones. They arent nearly as hard to pin down: Numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine Fractions expressed completely in numbers: Two-thirds or one-third, but a third is a third and doesnt need a hyphen. Self, Ex and All when used as prefixes will require a hyphen: ex-president, self-expression, all-knowing. Style, elect, free and based will usually be preceded by a hyphen when used as suffixes: French-style, president-elect, Chicago-based. Compounds can be complicated. Almost all the work you read on compounds will tell you that open versus hyphenated forms are complicated. Most of them suggest a dictionary check when youre unsure, and I dont think theres any shame in that. I find it pretty confusing too. Nevertheless, I hope this blog post will put you on the road to knowing when to use the hyphen and when you not to do so.