Compound Adjectives

Question

Hi,There are sometimes some compound adjectives which are built with a hyphen,since the others are just made without hyphen.E.g: lifelong, life-sizeIs there any specific rule for this?Regards,Iman

Grammarfreak · Accepted Answer

There is really no spoken rule, but the rule of thumb is, check the word against the dictionary to see if it actually exists. If not, hyphenate the compound word. i.e. The snow storm was so severe that by morning, the snow on the driveway was knee-deep.

Imantaghavi · Answer

Thank you Grammarfreak very much.
What you mean is that we hyphenate them when we want to coin a new adjective such as 15-year-old?

Cheers,

Iman

Grammarfreak · Answer

imantaghaviThank you Grammarfreak very much.What you mean is that we hyphenate them when we want to coin a new adjective such as 15-year-old?Cheers,Iman

I don't see a problem doing that based on my 25 years of studying, speaking and using the language. There are thousands of such usages. Baby-blue eyes, finger-licking-good, farm-fresh produce, high-tech industry etc... just to name s few.

Imantaghavi · Answer

Thank you for your time.

Iman

Habiba Ahmed · Answer

Usually, hyphens are used to link the words to make up a compound adjective. For example,

At the end of the session, the instructor will ask a few close-ended questions from each one of us.
Accent and ascent are just one-letter apart.
I can see an absent-minded person in my classroom.

However, you do not need to use hyphens when there are proper nouns that are used to form up a compound adjective. For example,

I so wanted to download 8 Ball Pool game but didn’t get time.

In the above example, 8 Ball Pool is a compound adjective which is made up of a proper noun. This is the reason for not using hyphens to link these words together. This compound adjective ‘8 Ball Pool’ is describing the game.

> You do not need to use hyphens when the compound adjective comes after the noun. For example, the student is well behaved.

I know a very famous trick through which you'll get to know whether to use hyphens between words to form a compound adjective or not.

> You do not need to use hyphens when you can use the word ‘and’ between the words. For example,

1. She is wearing a pretty bright dress. (Correct)

In the above example, the adjectives are ‘pretty bright.’ Now, use the word ‘and’ between these adjectives and see if it is making sense or not.

She is wearing a pretty and bright dress. (Correct)

You can see that after using the word ‘and’, the sentence is still making sense. It means that there is no need to use a hyphen to join ‘pretty’ and ‘bright.’

> In the same way, you would need a hyphen if the sentence will not make sense after using ‘and’ between the adjectives. For instance,

1. I feel very bad when I think about cold blooded animals.

In the above example, the adjectives are ‘cold blooded.’ Now, use the word ‘and’ between these adjectives and see if it is making sense or not.

I feel very bad when I think about cold and blooded animals. (Wrong)

No, it is not making sense. We truly need a hyphen to join the adjectives to make it grammatically correct. So, the correct sentence would be,

I feel very bad when I think about cold-blooded animals. (Correct)

To read the whole post, kindly click on the link http://wordeng.com/grammar-terms/compound-adjectives

Compound Adjectives

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