English Learning: Compound Noun

Grammar, # compound noun, noun,

A compound noun is a type of noun that is made up of two or more words put together. The words work together to make one whole meaning. When two short words are joined together, the stress is usually on the first syllable.

A lot of compound nouns are made by combining a noun and an adjective or another noun.

The first word in a compound noun usually gives us more information about what the item is or its purpose, while the second word usually tells us what the item is.

Closed-form: All joined together into one word

Compound nouns are sometimes one word, like toothpaste, haircut, or bedroom, girlfriend, butterfly, makeup. These are often referred to as closed or solid compound nouns.

Open-form: Written as two separate words

Sometimes compound nouns appear as two separate words: bus stop, ice cream, full moon, Christmas tree, and swimming pool, upper class, rain forest are some examples of compound nouns that are formed with two separate words. These are often referred to as open or spaced compound nouns.

Hyphenated form: Connected with a hyphen

Sometimes compound nouns are connected with a hyphen: dry-cleaning, daughter-in-law, and well-being are some examples of hyphenated compound nouns.

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Plural Forms

Singular nouns are easy, but when it comes to making compound nouns into plurals, there are different rules. Let’s break it down into three types.

Single-word Compound Nouns

For this type of compound noun, it’s usually simple to make it plural. Just add -s or -es to the end, like chalkboard becomes chalkboards and eyelash becomes eyelashes.

Multiple-word Compound Nouns

This type can be a bit tricky. Sometimes, you just need to make the last word plural, like with wedding planners or soft drinks.

But other times, it’s not so simple. For example, the plural of attorney general is attorneys general. This is because attorney is the main word, and general is describing what job the attorney has. So when we talk about more than one attorney general, we need to make attorney plural.

Compound Nouns with Hyphens

These can be confusing too. Sometimes, you just add -s or -es to the end of the last word, like jack-in-the-boxes or fixer-uppers. But other times, it’s not that simple. Like with sisters-in-law or runners-up, you need to make the main word plural, not the last word.

Confusion

What about bigfoot? Bigfoots or Bigfeet? Or would the plural form be the same as the singular form, and you’d meet a group of Bigfoot? According to internet Bigfoot enthusiasts, the correct plural form is “Bigfoots“. Similarly, the plural of “football” is “footballs,” not “feetballs.”

However, there are compound nouns that aren’t pluralized this way. Certain compound nouns, namely ones that refer to units of measurement like cupful and teaspoonful, traditionally pluralized their semantic heads. But in some modern dictionaries, these words are made plural by simply adding an “s” to the end, i.e., Merriam-Webster prefers cupfuls instead of cupsful and teaspoonfuls instead of teaspoonsful.