Tell me more ×
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 2 down vote favorite
1

Should I say "3 half days" or "3 half-days" or "3 half-day"? I mean I want to refer to, for example, the a.m. of Monday, the p.m. of Wednesday, and the a.m. of Friday, together.

share|improve this question
How about 36 hours? Anyway, 'three half days' is accurate (says what it means and means what it says) but probably won't mean much to people until you say 'three of either a morning, for example...' – Mitch Oct 8 '12 at 21:28
2  
"36 hours" is not "three half-days". It's equal in terms of the quantity of time, but not the literal meaning. – user1664196 Oct 8 '12 at 21:31
Isn't the quantity of time really the literal meaning? If not, you need to give an explanation of the meaning that you want to help us decide. Examples aren't enough. For example, in giving exams, an exam period is either the morning, the afternoon, or the evening (three equal allowable periods). You might understand that, but giving an example of them is not enough. – Mitch Oct 8 '12 at 21:39
1  
OP gave a specific example: "the a.m. of Monday, the p.m. of Wednesday, and the a.m. of Friday". I'm assuming those are business hours or classroom hours so it's like saying, "...half of Monday, half of Wednesday and half of Friday" - in other words, 3 half days. – Kristina Lopez Oct 9 '12 at 3:10
show 1 more comment

1 Answer

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You should say:

three half-days

share|improve this answer
Why "three half days" is wrong? – user1664196 Oct 8 '12 at 21:32
Because you must use a hyphen in something like “a half-day” or “a quarter-hour”. Otherwise you need to make it longer: half a day, a quarter of an hour. – tchrist Oct 8 '12 at 21:37
Why both "half a day" and "a half of a day" sound right but "quarter an hour" doesn't? – user1664196 Oct 9 '12 at 1:28
@user1664196 Because you can use “half a something” but not “quarter a something”: half a dozen, half a bushel, half a pound, half a foot, half an hour, half a crown. However, you can run a quarter the distance. – tchrist Oct 9 '12 at 1:44
1  
@KristinaLopez No, those are still nouns, just used attributively. The OED provides the example of “their half-wit uncle” [from the Times], and says that that’s an “attrib.” noun. The adjective would be half-witted, as in “A half-witted king, every day growing feebler in mind.” [Bancroft]. Noun–noun compounds have always been around in English, but there use has increased in modern times. This is a real headache for people doing natural language processing and computational linguistics on a computer. – tchrist Oct 9 '12 at 3:45
show 4 more comments

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.