Meaning of open compound | Babel Free

Definitions

A compound word with spaces in it, for example, high school, school bus, or science fiction.

Equivalents

Examples

“Two-word compounds--named open compounds in Edward N. Teall's Meet Mr. Hyphen--are in fact very common.”

“Thus such words, to give only a very few examples, as pismire, baise-mains, favonian, hearstling, happenstance, chanticleer, and open compounds like guardhouse lawyer,sidewalk superintendent and slush fund are registered without any kind of status label ...”

“Further, the language permits open compounds, as indicated above, so that we might conjecture such spellings as "battlecry, battle-field, battle ground, battle-piece and battlewise."”

“Should the Yiddish noun ris-uf 'start' be written as an open or a hyphenated compound? The MEYYED gives it as an open compound (ris uf) in the English- Yiddish ...”

“The examples also exemplify the three forms that compound words take: 1) open compound (snail mail); 2) hyphenated compound (eagle-eyed); and 3) solid compound (bookworm).”

“A subentry is an open compound (e.g., express contract) whose major element is the noun (contract at whose alphabetical place the subentry is entered.”

“In an open compound, the component words are separate, with no hyphen (well fed; wagon train).”

“Some compounds are written as space-separated words, which are called open compounds (e.g. hard drive), while others are written as single words, which are called closed compounds (e.g. wallpaper). In this paper, we shall focus only on closed compounds because open compounds do not require further splitting.”

CEFR level