Compound Nouns: Putting Words Together

What do these five words have in common: hotdog, fireworks, well-being, waistline, sunset and ice cream? They could all describe a fun holiday celebration. For example:

My holiday was wonderful! I went to a friend's party and we laughed, ate and had a lovely time. We grilled hotdogs and made ice cream. Then, after sunset, we all went down to the river to watch the fireworks. It was a great time...but probably terrible for my waistline!

Great story! But what is the grammatical connection between all the words we talked about? They are all compound nouns and that is our subject today.

A compound noun is a noun made by putting two or more words together to act as one noun. These nouns can be written as one word (as in fireworks and waistline), as hyphenated words (as in well-being), or as separate words (as in ice cream).

Compound nouns often have different meanings from their separate words. For example, if you had never heard of a "hotdog," you probably would not know its meaning just from the words "hot" and "dog." A hotdog is a small cooked sausage usually made from beef or pork.

Making compound nouns

Compound nouns are often constructed from two parts of speech. The most common are:

•noun + noun, as in ice cream, waistline and fireworks, which you heard earlier in the program
•adjective + noun, as in hotdog and greenhouse.
Greenhouses at botanical gardens carry plants from around the world.
•and noun + verb, as in sunset and rainfall.
The average yearly rainfall in Washington, DC is around 40 inches.
But, compound nouns are also formed in other ways, such as:

•noun + preposition, as in passer-by
A passer-by witnessed the car accident on 17th Street.
•gerund + noun, as in swimming pool and washing machine
I'm so glad that our hotel has a swimming pool!
•adjective + verb, as in public speaking and dry cleaning
Can you call and see if the dry cleaning is ready?
•verb + preposition, as in take-off and lookout
Flight attendants, please prepare for take-off.
•and preposition + verb, as in output and overthrow.
The company increased output by extending its office hours.
Plurals and possessives

OK, moving on to plurals and possessives.

In most plural compound nouns, the -s goes at the end. But here's a little more to know:

If the compound noun has no space or does have a space in between words, the -s usually goes at the end, such as in greenhouses, waistlines, washing machines and swimming pools.

If the compound noun has a hyphen or hyphens, the -s usually goes at the end of the noun, such as in secretaries-general, passers-by and fathers-in-law.

To make the possessive form, simply add an apostrophe -s to the end of the complete word, such as in these examples:

My daughter-in-law's dress is being made.

The dry cleaner's number is on the table.

How to pronounce

Lastly, let's talk about stress. In spoken language, stress is giving greater loudness or force to part of a word. Correct stress is very important for compound nouns.

We usually stress the first syllable. For instance, when I say the word "fireworks," I put greater loudness on "fire." If I put the stress on "works," it changes the meaning and would confuse the listener.

Listen to more examples that stress the first syllable:

swimming pool
football
haircut
bedroom
take-off
ice cream

And, just for fun, here's an old – but still popular – song about ice cream:

I scream
You scream
We all scream for ice cream!

Not all compound nouns follow the rule of first syllable stress. Proper nouns that are more than one word are considered compound nouns and they usually carry the stress at the start of the second word.

Listen for the stress in these proper nouns:

New Orleans
Las Vegas
Mount Rainier
Grand Canyon
South Africa
New Zealand
Secretary-General
Prime Minister

By now in your English studies, you've already used many compound nouns. And, surely, you'll use many more. So, practice ones that are useful to you in speaking and writing! You can use a good dictionary to check how we say and write them.

I'm Alice Bryant.

Alice Bryant wrote this story for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.