COMPOUND WORD
Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
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1998
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© Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language 1998, originally published by Oxford University Press 1998. (Hide copyright information)
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COMPOUND WORD Also
compound. A WORD made up of two or more other words:
teapot, from
tea and
pot;
blackbird, from
black and
bird. Compound words occur in many languages. In
GERMAN, they are conventionally written in solid form:
Eisenbahn (‘ironway’) railway;
Eisenbahnknotenpunkt (‘ironwayknotpoint’) railway junction. In GREEK and
LATIN, they are typically joined by thematic vowels, such as the -i- of Latin
agricultura, the -o- of Greek
biographia. In
FRENCH, one kind of compound has the form of a prepositional phrase:
pomme de terre (‘apple of earth’) potato;
arc-en-ciel (‘arch in sky’) rainbow. Another consists of a verb-noun phrase:
gratte-ciel (‘scrape-sky’) sky-scraper;
grille-pain (‘grill-bread’) toaster. Such compounds occasionally occur in English; ‘man of the church’ matches
homme d'église, and ‘breakwater’ matches
brise-lames.
Compounds in English
The majority of English compounds fall into two types: (1)
VERNACULAR compounds like
teapot and
blackbird, formed on principles typical of the Germanic languages. They are written in solid form, open form, or with hyphens. (2)
CLASSICAL COMPOUNDS like
agriculture and
biography, based on the compounding patterns of Greek and Latin. They are generally written in solid form. There are also some minor groups, such as those containing prepositions, in the French style:
commander-in-chief,
man-at-arms,
man of the church. Grammarians generally treat the vernacular form as the compound proper. The classical compound belongs to a stratum of language which serves as an international resource on which many languages draw: see
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC VOCABULARY. The status of vernacular compounds has traditionally been established through two criteria: how they sound and how they appear in writing and print. Because of this, they can be divided for practical purposes into
phonological compounds and
orthographic compounds.
Phonological compounds
In
SPEECH, most two-word compounds have a falling intonation and are stressed on the first word (
TEApot,
BLACKbird) or primary stress falls on the stressed syllable of the first word (
eMERgency plan,
RePUBlican Party). This pattern of stress and intonation usually serves to distinguish compounds from expressions which typically have equal stress on both elements: such adjectival phrases as
the white house (as opposed to
the WHITE House) and nouns used attributively (
íron brídge, as opposed to
IRONbridge, the name of a town in England). Compound words, and phrases containing
ATTRIBUTIVE NOUNS, generally have explanatory paraphrases:
teapot a pot for tea;
iron bridge a bridge made of iron. The following examples show differences in sound and meaning between compound and attributive usages (the compound first in each pair):
ORange juice juice squeezed from oranges and
órange júice juice that is orange in colour;
KEY position the position of a key or keys and
kéy position a posítion of great importance.
Adjective/noun combinations like
blackbird are established as compounds both on the phonological criterion of stress and the semantic criteria of generic use and unique reference.
BLACKbird has the stress pattern of
teapot (distinct from the stress pattern of
a bláck bírd) and serves as the unique generic name for all such birds. Colour adjectives often figure in such compounds (
blackboard,
bluebird,
brownstone,
greenhouse,
paleface,
redcoat,
redskin,
whitecap) as well as in place and personal names (
Blackburn,
Greenland,
Greystoke,
Redpath,
the White House,
Whitehouse).
Phonological and related factors become more intricate as structures containing compounds increase in length. In
car factory strike committee, stress is placed on both
car and
strike. The group can be analysed as ((
CAR factory) (
STRIKE committee)), and paraphrased as a ‘committee dealing with strikes in a factory that makes cars’. The compound
car factory precedes the compound
strike committee, and is therefore attributive. Such a combination is sometimes called a
double or
multiple compound. In principle, such groupings are indefinitely extensible:
Coventry car factory strike committee policy decision, analysable as (((COventry) (CAR factory)) ((STRIKE committee) (POLicy decision))), and paraphrased as a ‘decision about policy made by a committee dealing with strikes in a factory that makes cars in Coventry’. In English, such expressions are not usually written as one word, as in German. Both languages, however, exploit very fully their capacity to form compounds and other multiple word groups.
Orthographic compounds
Traditionally, more attention has been paid to compounds on paper than to how they sound. In writing and print there are three forms: (1)
Solid compounds, such as
teapot and
blackbird. (2)
Hyphenated compounds, such as
body-blow,
bridge-builder,
mud-walled. (3)
Open compounds, such as
Army depot,
coffee cup. The conventions of solidity, hyphenation, and openness have tended to determine whether a word is considered a compound or not. Solidity and hyphenation endorse and reinforce compound status, visually distinguishing
a greenhouse or
a green-house from
a green house (a house that is green). Although such distinctions can be valuable, they are not consistently applied:
Whitehouse can be the name of a place or a family, but
the White House in Washington is never *
the Whitehouse or *
the White-house.
In linguistics, the status of an item as a compound depends more on phonological than orthographic criteria, but in typography the orthographic forms have great importance. Even so, however, decisions about written compounds are more rule-of-thumb than rule, and fall into three groups: (1) Those made up of short words and therefore likely to be solid:
teapot,
blackbird. (2) Those made up of constituents which would look strange when combined and are therefore likely to be open (
coffee cup rather than
coffee-cup or
coffeecup) or hyphenated (
body-blow rather than
bodyblow). (3) Compound-complex words are usually hyphenated:
bridge-builder,
mud-walled. However, many items freely vary:
businessman,
business-man,
business man;
wine bottle,
wine-bottle,
winebottle. As a further rule of thumb, the older and shorter a noun/noun or noun/adjective compound, the more likely it is to be solid:
rattlesnake. The newer and longer it is, the more likely it is to be open:
population explosion. Beyond that, the traditional practice appears to be, ‘When in doubt, use a hyphen’. However, the writing and printing of many compound patterns remain uncertain and idiosyncratic, except where a house style is firmly applied. The same writer may make the same compound solid in one place (
worldview), hyphenate it in another (
world-view), and open it up in a third (
world view), sometimes within a few pages of each other.
Paraphrase patterns
Next to phonology and orthography, the most distinctive aspect of compounds is susceptibility to paraphrase. This exhibits a kind of covert syntax based mainly on prepositional phrases: the compound
teapot can be paraphrased only as ‘a pot
for tea’, not a ‘pot
of tea’. Similarly, an
armchair is ‘a chair with arms’, a
flower pot ‘a pot for (holding) flowers’, a
goatskin ‘the skin of a goat’, and a
bank clerk ‘a clerk in a bank’. Innumerable semantic relationships of this kind occur among compounds, some easy to interpret in isolation, others dependent on context.
London goods, for example, may be ‘goods in London’, ‘goods for London’, ‘goods from London’. Paraphrasing is not, however, always straightforward, even when the context is clear. What paraphrase is best for
steamboat: ‘a boat that uses steam’, ‘a boat using steam’, ‘a boat driven by steam’, ‘a boat with a steam engine in it’, or ‘steam drives this boat’? Precise paraphrase is impossible, but imprecise paraphrases still work adequately, because the relation between
steam and
boat is clear enough. It is the same with
sheepdog ‘a dog that? sheep’,
silk merchant a merchant who? silk,
car factory a factory? cars, and
honey bee a bee that? honey.
Families of compounds
There are many sets of compounds based on the same word, such as
gunboat,
riverboat,
rowboat,
steamboat. In such sets, the second element is generic, but its relationship with each member of its set is likely to be different. A
steamboat is a boat propelled by steam, but a
riverboat is not a boat propelled by a river. It is a boat used on a river. A
houseboat is neither a boat propelled by a house nor a boat used on or in a house, but a floating house in the form of a boat, or a boat in the form of a house, usually moored in one place. Analogous forms are unlikely. There is no *
bungalow boat or *
mansionboat, except for nonce or stunt purposes. A
gunboat is a boat with one or more large guns on it, a
rowboat is AmE for a boat that can be rowed, BrE equivalent a
rowing boat. Such forms and relationships are legion, but native speakers generally have little difficulty with them. Similarly, they have no difficulty in distinguishing a
houseboat from a
boathouse or a
horse race from a
racehorse.
Compound names
Holistic compounds include proper names like
Sutton (a reduced version of ‘South Town’) and
Shakespeare (who shook no spears). Words like these have unique references and histories and their elements make no contribution to their everyday use. Historical association has produced various more or less opaque everyday compounds formed from names, such as
Wellington boot (a British rubber boot named after the Duke of Wellington) and
Balaclava helmet (a knitted cap associated with Balaclava, first used by British soldiers in the Crimean War). Such compounds are readily clipped, to become
wellingtons (or
wellies) and
balaclavas.
Compounds in context
The coinage and use of compound words often follow a pattern of development in texts and social situations, usually a sequence that reinforces certain usages and may precipitate others. A character in a story may be introduced as
a man with a red beard, brought in again as
a red-bearded man and then called
Redbeard. This might be his only name in a story for children or it could be an epithet, like
Eric Redbeard, in a historical saga. In the flow of a narrative, new information is placed in focus in various ways. One such device is primary stress, already significant in compounds. It becomes particularly noticeable when texts containing patterns of compounding are read aloud, as in the following (each new focus italicized):Let's have a little talk about
tweetle beetles—
What do you
know about tweetle beetles? Well…
When tweetle beetles
fight, it's called a tweetle beetle
battle.
And when they battle in a
puddle, it's a tweetle beetle
puddle battle.
AND when tweetle beetles battle with
paddles in a puddle, they call it a tweetle beetle puddle
paddle battle.
AND when beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a
bottle …
they call this a tweetle beetle
bottle puddle paddle battle
muddle.
(from Dr Seuss ,
Fox in Socks, 1960)
Creative paradigms
Nonce and stunt compounds are often generated by social and linguistic circumstance. In the US television series
Hart to Hart (1983), a character is asked: ‘What's the matter, Max, you got heart-burn?’ To which he replies, referring to a game of poker, ‘Not only that—I got club-burn, diamond-burn, and spade-burn.’ Comparably,
drug abuse begets, as needs arise and similarities are recognized, such parallel forms as
alcohol abuse,
child abuse,
solvent abuse,
spouse abuse,
substance abuse. Analogical paradigms of this kind are common.
Conclusion
Vernacular compounding is an open system. Users of English daily form and forget compounds in which words of vastly different pedigree and association come together. The following come from data collected in the 1980s:
ashram fashion,
blimp patrol,
energy vampire,
karma debt,
punctuality nut,
Stupor Bowl,
whale jazz,
zombie powder. See
ABBREVIATION,
ANALOGY,
COMBINING FORM,
EPONYM,
FIXED PHRASE,
NOUN-INCORPORATION,
PHRASAL VERB,
WORD-FORMATION.
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