COMPOUND NOUNS

noun + noun
The noun + noun structure, in which the first noun modifies or describes the second
noun, is commonly used for expressions which specify certain kinds of thing.
They describe things that belong to well-known classes. Thus we have, e.g. a return
ticket, a season ticket, a history/geography/maths book, science fiction, a
gold/silver/bronze medal, theatre tickets, milk chocolate.

Substituting the adjectival form of the noun as a modifier would normally indicate
particular instances of something. Compare the following:

If you buy a season ticket you don't have to bother buying a return ticket every day.
I still can't get used to the unseasonal weather which we get in Britain all the time
now.

The geography books that we used to have in school look very dull now.
The geographical features of the mountain range were really quite stunning.
Science fiction books are not as popular with the public as adventure stories.
The scientific instruments that we used for the experiment were all made in Germany.
In the 400 m race I was hoping for a gold medal but I had to make do with a bronze.
She was wearing a tiny golden cross around her neck.

Theatre tickets can be bought from the half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square.
Such theatrical behaviour was not welcomed in a university department.
My chocoholic friend always has her cupboards full of Belgian and Swiss milk
chocolate.
As I had missed my supper, she made me a milky drink before I went to bed.

adjective + noun
However, there are a number of exceptions where adjective + noun rather than noun +
noun is used to describe well-known classifications. Here are a few of the most
common:

A monthly ticket is always much cheaper to buy than four weekly tickets.
Musical instruments and personal computers were what my children want for Xmas.
It is general knowledge among the general public that rail travel is unreliable.
If we had a good regional network, this might lead to a national network for the trains.
To achieve that objective, industrial relations will need to improve.
The central heating had to be switched off in the natural history museum.
Higher education is possible for Jo - if not higher education, then further education.

Note that there are three main ways of expressing compound nouns:

noun + noun a feature film

noun + 's + noun goat's milk
noun + preposition + noun the bottom of the hill
Usually only one way is possible. We would not say for instance: a film of feature or a
feature's film. We would not say: goat milk or milk of a goat. We would not say: the
hill's bottom or the hill bottom.

Write to our Message Board with your own examples of interesting compound nouns
you have noted.

Possessives or compound nouns?

Antonella Anzalone from Italy writes:

Can you please tell me about the use of the genitive inflection? I was told by an
English friend that it should only be used when referring to people but I have
frequently found it used in forms like: the US bank's Italian corporate finance division
or Saturday's game. Can you explain to me how it works?

Roger Woodham replies:

Possessives or compound nouns?

We can demonstrate the link between two nouns either by using possessive forms (the
US bank's finance division / the finance division of the US bank) or compound nouns
(the US bank finance division). Sometimes all three are possible, as here. Sometimes
one form is more likely than another.

Possessive forms: 's or of ?

We normally use the genitive or possessive 's structure when we are referring to
ownership and possession, people and animals, personal and professional
relationships, or the origin of something in a country or organisation:

Mark's uncle has just bought a Porsche Boxter.

Mark's Uncle Frank is Sheila's oldest brother.

Pig's liver is full of iron and vitamins.

He has strange tastes: he prefers goat's milk to cow's milk.

Stan's new secretary is not even computer literate.

The company's difficulties should not be underestimated.

Scotland's natural beauty is on a par with Finland's.

In examples relating to country and organisations, i.e. things which are inanimate,
both forms are often possible:

The policy of the company / the company's policy is to recruit staff from all EU
countries.

Poland's history / the history of Poland illustrates the art of survival against the odds.

We also use the possessive 's to express certain ideas relating to time:

New Year's Day falls on a Saturday in 2005.

Last Saturday's match was fully reported in last Sunday's News of the World.

There was twenty minutes' delay before the plane could take off.

Disneyland was seven hours' drive from where we were staying.

Compound nouns are sometimes also possible here:

Our son so much wanted to go to Disneyland that we had to resign ourselves to a

seven-hour journey.

A ten-minute delay was acceptable, but a three-hour delay wasn't.

Note that although we talk about New Year's Day all other special days in the calendar
are formed with compound nouns: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday, Easter
Day, Bank Holiday Monday, etc. When talking about resolutions, it can be either New
Year resolutions (more likely) or New Year's resolutions (less likely).
Note that when we refer to a specific date, the of structure is used:

Holidaymakers suffering from that stomach bug on board the cruise ship, the Aurorra
- this was reported in The Sunday Times of 25 November 2003.

Over one hundred Renaissance paintings were destroyed in the earthquake of 1926.

Compound nouns (noun + noun)

Note the frequency of compound nouns in the previous two examples -

holidaymakers, stomach bug, cruise ship, Sunday Times, Renaissance paintings,
earthquake. When we use compound nouns like these, the first noun has the same
function as a classifying adjective - it tells or describes the nature of the second noun:

This shoe shop sells sports shoes.

Communication skills teachers sometimes teach computer studies.

Compound nouns are particularly useful in newspaper headlines and reports as they
enable a lot of information to be summarised quickly:

Premiership footballers on a winter break in Spain may face gang-rape allegation

charges.

Definition
In English, words, particularly adjectives and nouns, are combined into compound
structures in a variety of ways. And once they are formed, they sometimes
metamorphose over time. A common pattern is that two words — fire fly, say — will
be joined by a hyphen for a time — fire-fly — and then be joined into one word —
firefly. In this respect, a language like German, in which words are happily and
immediately linked one to the other, might seem to have an advantage. There is only
one sure way to know how to spell compounds in English: use an authoritative
dictionary.

There are three forms of compound words:

the closed form, in which the words are melded together, such as firefly, secondhand,
softball, childlike, crosstown, redhead, keyboard, makeup, notebook;

the hyphenated form, such as daughter-in-law, master-at-arms, over-the-counter, six-

pack, six-year-old, mass-produced;

and the open form, such as post office, real estate, middle class, full moon, half sister,
attorney general.
How a word modified by an adjective — "a little school," "the yellow butter" — is
different from a compound word — " a high school," "the peanut butter" — is a nice
and philosophical question. It clearly has something to do with the degree to which
the preceding word changes the essential character of the noun, the degree to which
the modifier and the noun are inseparable. If you were diagramming a sentence with a
compound word, you would probably keep the words together, on the same horizontal
line.

Modifying compounds are often hyphenated to avoid confusion. The New York
Public Library's Writer's Guide points out that an old-furniture salesman clearly deals
in old furniture, but an old furniture salesman would be an old man. We probably
would not have the same ambiguity, however, about a used car dealer. When
compounded modifiers precede a noun, they are often hyphenated: part-time teacher,
fifty-yard-wide field, fire-resistant curtains, high-speed chase. When those same
modifying words come after the noun, however, they are not hyphenated: a field fifty
yards wide, curtains that are fire resistant, etc. The second-rate opera company gave a
performance that was first rate.

Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are hyphenated when compounded

with other modifiers: the highest-priced car, the shorter-term loan. But this is not
always the case: the most talented youngster. Adverbs, words ending in -ly, are not
hyphenated when compounded with other modifiers: a highly rated bank, a partially
refunded ticket, publicly held securities.

Sometimes hyphenated modifiers lose their hyphens when they become compound
nouns: A clear decision-making process was evident in their decision making. The
bluish grey was slowly disappearing from the bluish-grey sky. This is not always so,
however: your high-rise apartment building is also known as a high-rise.

When modifying a person with his or her age, the compounded phrase is hyphenated:
my six-year-old son. However, when the age comes after the person, we don't use a
hyphen. My son is six years old. He is, however, a six-year-old.

Plurals and Possessives

Most dictionaries will give variant spellings of compound plurals. When you have
more than one truck filled with sand, do you have several truckfuls or trucksful? The
dictionary will give you both, with the first spelling usually preferred. (And the same
is true of teaspoonfuls, cupfuls, etc.) The dictionary will help you discover that only
one spelling is acceptable for some compounds — like passersby.

For hyphenated forms, the pluralizing -s is usually attached to the element that is
actually being pluralized: daughters-in-law, half-moons, mayors-elect. The Chicago
Manual of Style says that "hyphenated and open compounds are regularly made plural
by the addition of the plural inflection to the element that is subject to the change in
number" and gives as examples "fathers-in-law," "sergeants-in-arms," "doctors of
philosophy," "and courts-martial" (196). The NYPL Writer's Guide puts it this way:
"the most significant word — generally the noun — takes the plural form. The
significant word may be at the beginning, middle, or end of the term" (396). And then
we get examples such as "attorneys at law," "bills of fare," chiefs of staff," notaries
public," assistant attorneys general," "higher-ups," "also-rans," and "go-betweens."

Note: some dictionaries will list "attorney generals" along with "attorneys general" as
acceptable plurals of that office. Whether that's a matter of caving in to popular usage
or an inability to determine the "significant word" is unknown.

As a general rule, then, the plural form of an element in a hierarchical term belongs to
the base element in the term, regardless of the base element's placement:

first sergeants
sergeants major
sergeants first class
colonel generals [Russian]
lieutenant generals
lieutenant colonels
apprentice, journeyman, and master mechanics
deputy librarians
deputy assistant secretaries of state
The possessive of a hyphenated compound is created by attaching an apostrophe -s to
the end of the compound itself: my daughter-in-law's car, a friend of mine's car. To
create the possessive of pluralized and compounded forms, a writer is wise to avoid
the apostrophe -s form and use an "of" phrase (the "post genitive") instead: the
meeting of the daughters-in-law, the schedule of half-moons. Otherwise, the
possessive form becomes downright weird: the daughters-in-law's meeting, friends of
mine's cars.

One of the most difficult decisions to make about possessives and plurals of
compound words occurs when you can't decide whether the first noun in a compound
structure is acting as a noun that ought to be showing possession or as what is called
an attributive noun, essentially an adjective. In other words, do we write that I am
going to a writers conference or to a writers' conference? The Chicago Style Manual
suggests that if singular nouns can act as attributive nouns — city government, tax
relief — then plural nouns should be able to act as attributive nouns: consumers
group, teachers union. This principle is not universally endorsed, however, and writers
must remember to be consistent within a document.

This section does not speak to the matter of compounded nouns such as "Professor
Villa's and Professor Darling's classes have been filled." See the section on
Possessives for additional help.

Compounds with Prefixes

With a handful of exceptions, compounds created by the addition of a prefix are not
hyphenated:

anteroom, antisocial, binomial, biochemistry, coordinate, counterclockwise,

extraordinary, infrastructure, interrelated, intramural, macroeconomics, metaphysical,
microeconomics, midtown, minibike, multicultural, neoromantic, nonviolent,
overanxious, postwar, preconference, pseudointellectual, reunify, semiconductor,
socioeconomic, subpar, supertanker, transatlantic, unnatural, underdeveloped
Exceptions include
compounds in which the second element is capitalized or a number:
anti-Semitic, pre-1998, post-Freudian
compounds which need hyphens to avoid confusion
un-ionized (as distinguished from unionized), co-op
compounds in which a vowel would be repeated (especially to avoid confusion)
co-op, semi-independent, anti-intellectual (but reestablish, reedit)
compounds consisting of more than one word
non-English-speaking, pre-Civil War
compounds that would be difficult to read without a hyphen
pro-life, pro-choice, co-edited
Also, when we combine compound nouns, we would use a hyphen with the first, but
not the last: when under- and overdeveloped nations get together. . . .

Spelling
The following table presents a mini-dictionary of compound modifiers and nouns.
Perhaps the best use of a very partial inventory like this is to suggest the kinds of
words that a writer would be wise either to memorize or to be at least wary of. It is
sometimes enough to know when we should get the dictionary off the shelf.

2-year education
one-week vacation
A-frame
African American
Air Force
all-city tournament
attorney general
blood pressure
blue-green dress
bull's-eye
database
daughter-in-law
English-speaking person
ex-wife
first-rate accommodations
football
grandmother
grant-in-aid
great-aunt
half sister
high-level officials
I-beam
Italian-American
Italian-American club
jack-in-the-box
lifelike
light year
mayor-elect
salesperson
secretary-treasurer
stockbroker
T-square
threefold
up-to-the-minute
V-formation
vice president
well-made clothes
worldwide inflation
X-ray

Notice that African American contains no hyphen, but Italian-American does. There
are no hard and fast rules about this, and social conventions change. (There is no
hyphen in French Canadian.) Some groups have insisted that they do not want to be
known as "hyphenated Americans" and resist, therefore, the use of a hyphen,
preferring that the word "American" be used as an adjective. Some resources even
suggest that a term like Italian-American should be used only when the individual
thus referred to has parents of two different nationalities. That's probably a stretch, but
a writer must be aware that sensibilities can be aroused when using nationalities of
any description. Consistency within a document is also important.
Suspended Compounds*
With a series of nearly identical compounds, we sometimes delay the final term of the
final term until the last instance, allowing the hyphen to act as a kind of place holder,
as in

The third- and fourth-grade teachers met with the parents.

Both full- and part-time employees will get raises this year.
We don't see many 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children around here.
Be careful not to overuse this feature of the hyphen; readers have to wait until that
final instance to know what you're talking about, and that can be annoying.

FOR ADDITIONAL HELP

The Chicago Manual of Style contains an extensive section devoted to compounded
modifiers and nouns. That book's table of compounds categorizes compounds into
various types, and helps us discover principles of spelling (and some really strange
exceptions). Styles of compounding words change over the years, however, and
writers might even find different versions in different dictionaries. The Chicago
Manual is especially helpful because it tries to define the principles by which such
decisions are made

COMPOUND NOUNS

Formation

Words can be combined to form compound nouns. These are very common, and new
combinations are invented almost daily. They normally have two parts. The second
part identifies the object or person in question (man, friend, tank, table, room). The
first part tells us what kind of object or person it is, or what its purpose is (police, boy,
water, dining, bed):

What type / what purpose What or who

police man
boy friend
water tank
dining table
bed
room

The two parts may be written in a number of ways :

1. as one word.
Example: policeman, boyfriend

2. as two words joined with a hyphen.

Example: dining-table

3. as two separate words.

Example: fish tank.

There are no clear rules about this - so write the common compounds that you know
well as one word, and the others as two words.

The two parts may be: Examples:

noun + noun bedroom
water tank
motorcycle
printer cartridge
noun + verb rainfall
haircut
train-spotting
noun + adverb hanger-on
passer-by
verb + noun washing machine
driving licence
swimming pool
verb + adverb* lookout
take-off
drawback
adjective + noun greenhouse
software
redhead
adjective + verb dry-cleaning
public speaking
adverb + noun onlooker
bystander
adverb + verb* output
overthrow
upturn
input

Compound nouns often have a meaning that is different from the two separate words.

Stress is important in pronunciation, as it distinguishes between a compound noun

(e.g. greenhouse) and an adjective with a noun (e.g. green house).

In compound nouns, the stress usually falls on the first syllable:

a 'greenhouse = place where we grow plants (compound noun)

a green 'house = house painted green (adjective and noun)
a 'bluebird = type of bird (compound noun)
a blue 'bird = any bird with blue feathers (adjective and noun)

* Many common compound nouns are formed from phrasal verbs (verb + adverb or
adverb + verb).
Examples: breakdown, outbreak, outcome, cutback, drive-in, drop-out, feedback,
flyover, hold-up, hangover, outlay, outlet, inlet, makeup, output, set-back, stand-in,
takeaway, walkover.

You need to construct compound nouns from these words in the box below to fill in
the gaps in the sentences. Some of the words are used twice, but in a different order!

window reading seat pub day

phone child light fishing card
table food frame work boat

1. I only have coins on me and that's a _________________. I will have to see if there
is a public phone in that bar.

2. I want to put a _________________ in the car as they say it really makes toddlers
safer while driving.

3. John was furious with the airline company. He sat on that plane for 14 hours and
his _________________ didn't work. He couldn't even finish that novel he was
reading during the flight. He had to try and sleep.

4. "What type of credit card is that?" "That's not a credit card. That's a
_________________. I use it once a week to call my mum back home in New
Zealand."

5. All the _________________ in this house have to be repainted. Otherwise, they

will rot over the winter and then we may not be able to open the windows in the
spring.

6. English restaurants have a terrible reputation, but the _________________ is very

tasty.

7. I worked at night for so long that when I finally started to do some

_________________, I found it really strange.

8. A _________________ sank off the Spanish coast last night. Both fishermen were
saved by the coast guard.

9. I know that Monday is a holiday for everyone else, but for us it's a normal
_________________. We have to get this project finished by Wednesday!

10. Why do you have a _________________ in the middle of your lounge? I keep
feeling tempted to go up to the bar to order drinks!!

book token – könyvvásárlási utalvány

house bound – házhoz kötött
houseplant – szobanövény
houseproud – takarítási mániás
bookmaker, bookshop, bookworm, timebomb, timeconsuming, timetable, timelimit,
housework