A compound is a word composed of more than one free morphemes. A compound is a word (lexeme) that consists of more than one free morpheme. ... In linguistics, free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone, unlike bound morphemes, which only occur as parts of words. ...

English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their components. In grammar, a part of speech or word class is defined as the role that a word (or sometimes a phrase) plays in a sentence. ... In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ...

Compound nouns

Most English compound nouns are noun phrases (= nominal phrases) that include a noun modified by adjectives or attributive nouns. Due to the English tendency towards conversion, the two classes are not always easily distinguished. Most English compound nouns that consist of more than two words can be constructed recursively by combining two words at a time. The compound science fiction writer, for example, can be constructed by combining science and fiction, and then combining the resulting compound with writer. Some compounds, such as salt and pepper or mother-of-pearl, can not be constructed in this way, however. A noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. ... An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually making its meaning more specific. ... In linguistics, zero derivation or, less frequently, null derivation is a derivation by means of the null morpheme or zero morpheme, i. ... In mathematics and computer science, recursion is a particular way of specifying (or constructing) a class of objects (or an object from a certain class) with the help of a reference to other objects of the class: a recursive definition defines objects in terms of the already defined objects of...

Types of compound nouns

Since English is a mostly analytic language, unlike most other Germanic languages, it creates compounds by concatenating words without case markers. As in other Germanic languages, the compounds may be arbitrarily long. However, this is obscured by the fact that the written representation of long compounds always contains blanks. Short compounds may be written in three different ways, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, however: An analytic language (or isolating language) is a language in which the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and considered to be full-fledged words. By contrast, in a synthetic language, a word is composed of agglutinated or fused morphemes that denote its syntactic meanings. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire. ... In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word or sentence. ...

• The solid or closed form in which two usually moderately short words appear together as one. Solid compounds most likely consist of short (monosyllabic) units that often have been established in the language for a long time. Examples are housewife, lawsuit, wallpaper, etc.
• The hyphenated form in which two or more words are connected by a hyphen. Compounds that contain affixes, such as house-build(er) and single-mind(ed)(ness), as well as adjective-adjective compounds and verb-verb compounds, such as blue-green and freeze-dry, are often hyphenated. Compounds that contain particles, such as mother-of-pearl and salt-and-pepper, are also often hyphenated.
• The open or spaced form consisting of newer combinations of usually longer words, such as distance learning, player piano, lawn tennis, etc.

Usage in the US and in the UK differs and often depends on the individual choice of the writer rather than on a hard-and-fast rule; therefore, open, hyphenated, and closed forms may be encountered for the same compound noun, such as the triplets container ship/container-ship/containership and particle board/particle-board/odd-looking particleboard. Italic text:This article discusses the unit of speech. ... A hyphen ( - ) is a punctuation mark. ... An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a base morpheme to form a word. ...

In addition to this native English compounding, there is the classical type, which consists of words derived from Latin, as horticulture, and those of Greek origin, such as photography, the components of which are in bound form (connected by connecting vowels, which are most often -i- and -o- in Latin and Greek respectively) and cannot stand alone. A large portion of the technical and scientific lexicon of English and other Western European languages consists of classical compounds. ... A bound can be: an upper bound - mathematics Bound (movie) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Analyzability (transparency)

In general, the meaning of a compound noun is a specialization of the meaning of its head. The modifier limits the meaning of the head. This is most obvious in descriptive compounds, also known as karmadharaya compounds or endocentric compounds, in which the modifier is used in an attributive or appositional manner. A blackboard is a particular kind of board which is black, for instance. Concept B is a specialization of concept A if and only if: every instance of concept B is also an instance of concept A; and there are instances of concept A which are not instances of concept B. For instance, Bird is a specialization of Animal because every bird is... The word modifier applies to either the adjective or the adverb in a sentence. ...

In determinative compounds, however, the relationship is not attributive. For example, a footstool is not a particular type of stool that is like a foot. Rather, it is a stool for one's foot or feet. (It can be used for sitting on, but that is not its primary purpose.) In a similar manner, the office manager is the manager of an office, an armchair is a chair with arms, and a raincoat is a coat against the rain. These relationships, which are expressed by prepositions in English, would be expressed by grammatical case in other languages. Compounds of this type are also known as tatpurusha compounds or exocentric compounds. In compounds of this type, there is no obvious (semantic) head. In grammar, a preposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that establishes a relationship between an object (usually a noun phrase) and some other part of the sentence, often expressing a location in place or time. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... A Tatpurusha is a type of compound in Sanskrit grammar. ...

These two types account for most compound nouns, but there are other, rarer types as well. Coordinative, copulative or dvandva compounds combine elements with a similar meaning, and the compound meaning may be a generalization instead of a specialization. Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, is the combined area of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a fighter-bomber is an aircraft that is both a fighter and a bomber. Iterative or amredita compounds repeat a single element, to express repetition or as an emphasis. Day-by-day and go-go-go are examples of this type of compound, which has more than one head. A dvandva or copulative or coordinative compound refers to two or more objects that could be connected in sense by the conjunction and. Dvandvas are common in some languages such as Sanskrit, where the term originates, and Japanese, but less common in English (The term is not often found in... Concept A is a generalization of concept B if and only if: every instance of concept B is also an instance of concept A; and there are instances of concept A which are not instances of concept B. Equivalently, A is a generalization of B if B is a specialization...

The meaning of bahuvrihi compounds, however, is less obviously a combination of the meanings of its elements, and more of a metaphor. A blockhead, for example, is not someone with a square or particularly hard head, but someone who is thick as a brick. Likewise, a lionheart is someone brave. A bahuvrihi is a compound that refers to something that is not specified by any of its parts by themselves, especially a compound that refers to a possessor of an object specified. ... In language, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope where a comparison is made between two seemingly unrelated subjects. ...

Analyzability may be further limited by cranberry morphemes and semantic changes. For instance, the word butterfly, commonly thought to be a metathesis for flutter by, which the bugs do, is actually based on an old bubbe-maise that butterflies are petite witches that steal butter from windowsills. Cranberry is a part translation from Low German, which is why we cannot recognize the element cran (from the Low German kraan or kroon, "crane"). The ladybird or ladybug was named after the Christian expression "our Lady, the Virgin Mary". In linguistics, a cranberry morpheme is a bound morpheme that exists only in one lexeme. ... Metathesis is a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word. ... This article is part of the Witchcraft series. ... Balls of butter on a plate Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh cream. ... Subdivisions East Low German Low Franconian Low Saxon Low German (in Low German, Platt(düütsch) or Nedderdüütsch) is any of a variety of West Germanic languages spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands. ...

In the case of verb+noun compounds, the noun may be either the subject (grammar) or the object of the verb. In playboy, for example, the noun is the subject of the verb (the boy plays), whereas it is the object in callgirl (someone calls the girl). The subject of a sentence is one of the two main parts of a sentence, the other being the predicate. ... Etymology: The word object comes from the latin word objectum a noun form of objectus which in turn comes from objicere, which means to throw or put something before someone. ...

Sound patterns

A black board is any board that is black, and equal prosodic stress can be found on both elements (or, according to psycholinguist Steven Pinker, the second one is accented more heavily.) A blackboard, the compound, may have started out as any other black board, but now is a thing that is constructed in a particular way, of a particular material and serves a particular purpose; the word is clearly accented on the first syllable. Stress has different meanings in different fields: Stress (physics); see also tensile stress, shear stress and pressure. ... Psycholinguistics or linguistics of psychology is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ... Steven Pinker Steven Pinker (born September 18, 1954, in Montreal, Canada) is professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of a number of popular books. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... Italic text:This article discusses the unit of speech. ...

Sound patterns, such as stresses placed on particular syllables, may indicate whether the word group is a compound or whether it is an adjective-+-noun phrase. A compound usually has a falling intonation: "bláckboard," the "Whíte House", as opposed to the phrases "bláck bóárd". (Note that this rule does not apply in all contexts. For example, the stress pattern "whíte house" would be expected for the compound, which happens to be a proper name, but it is also found in the emphatic negation "No, not the black house; the white house!"

Compound adjectives

English compound adjectives are constructed in a very similar way to the compound noun. Blackboard jungle, leftover ingredients, gunmetal sheen, and green monkey disease are only a few examples.

A compound adjective is a modifier of a noun. It consists of two or more morphemes of which the left-hand component limits or changes the modification of the right-hand one, as in "the dark-green dress": dark limits the green that modifies dress.

Solid compound adjectives

There are some well-established permanent compound adjectives that have become solid over a longer period, especially in American usage: earsplitting, eyecatching, and downtown.

However, in British usage, these, apart from downtown, are more likely written with a hyphen: ear-splitting, eye-catching.

Other solid compound adjectives are for example:

• Numbers that are spelled out and have the suffix -fold added: "fifteenfold", "sixfold".
• Points of the compass: northwest, northwester, northwesterly, northwestwards, but not North-West Frontier.

Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science. ... A compass rose with Northwest highlighted Northwest is the ordinal direction halfway between West and North on a compass. ... North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) is geographically the smallest of the four provinces of Pakistan. ...

Hyphenated compound adjectives

A compound adjective is hyphenated if the hyphen helps the reader differentiate a compound adjective from two adjacent adjectives that each independently modify the noun. Compare the following examples:

• "acetic acid solution": a bitter solution producing vinegar or acetic acid (acetic + acid + solution)
• "acetic-acid solution": a solution of acetic acid

The hyphen is unneeded when capitalization or italicization makes grouping clear: The chemical compound acetic acid (from the Latin word acetum, meaning vinegar), systematically called ethanoic acid, is the acid that gives vinegar its sour taste. ... In databases, ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. ... Dissolving table salt in water In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture of one or more substances (the solutes) dissolved in another substance (the solvent). ... The chemical compound acetic acid (from the Latin word acetum, meaning vinegar), systematically called ethanoic acid, is the acid that gives vinegar its sour taste and very pungent smell when at high concentrations. ... Dissolving table salt in water In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture of one or more substances (the solutes) dissolved in another substance (the solvent). ...

• "old English scholar": an old person who is English and a scholar, or an old scholar who studies English
• "Old English scholar": a scholar of Old English.
• "De facto proceedings" (not "de-facto")

If, however, there is no risk of ambiguities, it may be written without a hyphen: Sunday morning walk. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A scholar is either a student or someone who has achieved a mastery of some academic discipline. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... De facto is a Latin expression that means in fact or in practice. It is commonly used as opposed to de jure (meaning by law) when referring to matters of law or governance or technique (such as standards), that are found in the common experience as created or developed without...

Hyphenated compound adjectives may have been formed originally by an adjective preceding a noun:

• "Round table" → "round-table discussion"
• "Blue sky" → "blue-sky law"
• "Red light" → "red-light district"
• "Four wheels" → "four-wheel drive" (the singular, not the plural, is used)

Others may have originated with a verb preceding an adjective or adverb: The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ...

• "Feel good" → "feel-good factor"
• "Buy now, pay later" → "buy-now pay-later purchase"

Yet others are created with an original verb preceding a preposition. In grammar, a preposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that establishes a relationship between an object (usually a noun phrase) and some other part of the sentence, often expressing a location in place or time. ...

• "Stick on" → "stick-on label"
• "Walk on" → "walk-on part"
• "Stand by" → "stand-by fare"
• "Roll on, roll off" → "roll-on roll-off ferry"

The following compound adjectives are always hyphenated when they are not written as one word:

• An adjective preceding a noun to which -d or -ed has been added as a past-participle construction:
  • "loud-mouthed hooligan"
  • "middle-aged lady"
  • "rose-tinted glasses"
• A noun, adjective, or adverb preceding a present participle:
  • "an awe-inspiring personality"
  • "a long-lasting affair"
  • "a far-reaching decision"
• Numbers spelled out or as numerics:
  • "seven-year itch"
  • "five-sided polygon"
  • "20th-century poem"
  • "30-piece band"
  • "tenth-story window"
• A numeric with the affix -fold has a hyphen (15-fold), but when spelled out takes a solid construction (fifteenfold).
• Numbers, spelled out or numeric, with added -odd: sixteen-odd, 70-odd.
• Compound adjectives with high- or low-: "high-level discussion", "low-price markup".
• Colours in compounds:
  • "a dark-blue sweater"
  • "a reddish-orange dress".
• Fractions as modifiers are hyphenated: "five-eighths inches", but if numerator or denominator are already hyphenated, the fraction itself does not take a hyphen: "a thirty-three thousandth part".
• Fractions used as nouns have no hyphens: "I ate only one third of the pie."
• Comparatives and superlatives in compound adjectives also take hyphens:
  • "the highest-placed competitor"
  • "a shorter-term loan"
• However, a construction with most is not hyphenated:
  • "the most respected member".
• Compounds including two geographical modifiers:
  • "Afro-Cuban"
  • "African-American" (sometimes)
  • "Anglo-Asian"
• But not
  • "Central American".

The following compound adjectives are not normally hyphenated: In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... 7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. ... A year is the time between two recurrences of an event related to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. ... An itch (Latin: pruritus) is a sensation felt on an area of skin that makes a person or animal want to scratch it. ... 5 (five) is a number, numeral, and glyph. ... Side (mod. ... Look up Polygon on Wiktionary, the free dictionary For other use please see Polygon (disambiguation) A polygon (literally many angle, see Wiktionary for the etymology) is a closed planar path composed of a finite number of sequential line segments. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... 30 (thirty) is the natural number following 29 and preceding 31. ... Band may mean: A musical band A band (electronics) is a range of frequencies or wavelengths between two given limits In anthropology, a band society A Rubber band In solid-state physics, an energy band The Band, a particular musical band See also: bandana This is a disambiguation page — a... 10 (ten) is the natural number following 9 and preceding 11. ... Highly decorative Window in a Japanese Onsen in Hakone A window is an opening in an otherwise solid, opaque surface through which light can pass. ... 15 (fifteen) is the natural number following 14 and preceding 16. ... 16 (sixteen) is the natural number following 15 and preceding 17. ... 70 (seventy) is the natural number following 69 and preceding 71. ... In economics and business, the price is the assigned numerical monetary value of a good, service or asset. ... There is more than one usage of the word markup. ... Color is an important part of the visual arts. ... 5 (five) is the natural number following 4 and preceding 6. ... 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. ... Mid-19th century tool for converting between different standards of the inch An inch is an Imperial and U.S. customary unit of length. ... In algebra, a vulgar fraction consists of one integer divided by a non-zero integer. ... In algebra, a vulgar fraction consists of one integer divided by a non-zero integer. ... 33 is the natural number following 32 and preceding 34. ... For the techno single by Moby, see Thousand (single). ... Central America is the region of North America located between the southern border of Mexico and the northwest border of Colombia, in South America. ...

• Where there is no risk of ambiguity:
  • "a Sunday morning walk".
• Left-hand components of a compound adjective that end in -ly that modify right-hand components that are past participles (ending in -ed):
  • "a hotly disputed subject"
  • "a greatly improved scheme"
  • "a distantly related celebrity"
• Compound adjectives that include comparatives and superlatives with more, most, less or least:
  • "a more recent development"
  • "the most respected member"
  • "a less opportune moment"
  • "the least expected event"
• Ordinarily hyphenated compounds with intensive adverbs in front of adjectives:
  • "very much admired classicist"
  • "really well accepted proposal"

In grammar the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another. ... In grammar the superlative of an adjective or adverb indicates that an entity transcends at least two other entities in some way. ...

Compound verbs

A compound verb is usually composed of a preposition and a verb, although other combinations also exist. The term compound verb was first used in publication in Grattan and Gurrey's Our Living Language (1925). In grammar, a preposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that establishes a relationship between an object (usually a noun phrase) and some other part of the sentence, often expressing a location in place or time. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... To publish is to make publicly known, and in reference to text and images, it can mean distributing paper copies to the public, or putting the content on a website. ... 1925 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ...

From a morphological point of view, some compound verbs are difficult to analyze because several derivations are plausible. Blacklist, for instance, might be analyzed as a adjective+verb compound, or as an adjective+noun compound that becomes a verb through zero derivation. Most compound verbs originally have the collective meaning of both components, but some of them later gain additional meanings that may predominate the original, accurate sense. Therefore, sometimes the resultant meanings are seemingly barely related to the original contributors. In linguistics, zero derivation or, less frequently, null derivation is a derivation by means of the null morpheme or zero morpheme, i. ...

Compound verbs composed of a noun and verb are comparatively rare, and the noun is generally not the direct object of the verb. In English, compounds such as *bread-bake or *car-drive do not exist. Yet we find literal action words, such as breastfeed, taperecord and washing instructions on clothing as for example hand wash. The accusative case of a noun is, generally, the case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ...

Hyphenation

Compound verbs with single-syllable modifiers are solid, or unhyphenated. Those with longer modifiers may originally be hyphenated, but as they became established, they became solid, e.g., A hyphen ( - ) is a punctuation mark. ...

• overhang (English origin)
• counterattack (Latin origin)

There was a tendency in the 18th century to use hyphens excessively, that is, to hyphenate all previously established solid compound verbs. American English, however, has diminished the use of hyphens, while British English is more conservative. (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... American English (AmE) is the form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ... British English (BrE) is a term used to refer to the form of the English language spoken in the British Isles. ...

Phrasal verbs

English syntax distinguishes between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs. Consider the following: In the English language, a phrasal verb is a verb combined with a preposition, an adverb, or an adverbial particle, all three of which are uninflected. ... The first meaning of the term syntax, originating from the Greek words συν (sun, meaning ‘together’) and ταξις (taxis, meaning sequence/order), can be described as the study of the rules, or patterned relations that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ...

I held up my hand.

I held up a bank.

I held my hand up.

*I held a bank up.

The first three sentences are possible in English; the last one is unlikely, except for Kryptonians. When to hold up means to raise, it is a prepositional verb; the preposition up can be detached from the verb and has its own individual meaning "from lower to a higher position". As a prepositional verb, it has a literal meaning. But when to hold up means to rob, it is a phrasal verb. A phrasal verb is used in an idiomatic, figurative or even metaphorical context. The preposition is inextricably linked to the verb, the meaning of each word cannot be determined independently but is in fact part of the idiom. superman lived here ... In the English language, a phrasal verb is a verb combined with a preposition, an adverb, or an adverbial particle, all three of which are uninflected. ...

The Oxford English Grammar (ISBN 0-19-861250-8) distinguishes seven types of prepositional or phrasal verbs in English:

• intransitive phrasal verbs (e.g. give in)
• transitive phrasal verbs (e.g. find out [discover])
• monotransitive prepositional verbs (e.g. look after [care for])
• doubly transitive prepositional verbs (e.g. blame [something] on [someone])
• copular prepositional verbs. (e.g. serve as)
• monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. look up to [respect])
• doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. put [something] down to [someone] [attribute to])

English has a number of other kinds of compound verb idioms. There are compound verbs with two verbs (e.g. make do). These too can take idiomatic prepositions (e.g. get rid of). There are also idiomatic combinations of verb and adjective (e.g. come true, run amok) and verb and adverb (make sure), verb and fixed noun (e.g. go ape); and these, too, may have fixed idiomatic prepositions (e.g. take place on).

Misuses of the term

"Compound verb" is often used in place of:

1. "complex verb", a type of complex phrase. But this usage is not accepted in linguistics, because "compound" and "complex" are not synonymous.
2. "verb phrase" or "verbal phrase". This is a partially, but not entirely, incorrect use. A phrasal verb can be a one-word verb, of which compound verb is a type. However, many phrasal verbs are multi-word.
3. "phrasal verb". A sub-type of verb phrase, which have a particle as a word before or after the verb.

A phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. ... Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... A phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. ... In the English language, a phrasal verb is a verb combined with a preposition, an adverb, or an adverbial particle, all three of which are uninflected. ...

See also

• Compound (linguistics)
• Metaphor
• Phrasal verb
• Portmanteau, Syllabic abbreviations