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Which is correct: high society networking, or, high-society networking?

Chicago Manual of Style gives a middle-class neighborhood/the neighborhood is middle class as an example of a generic rule that adjective + noun compounds should be hyphenated if modifying another noun. However, many common terms like "real estate agent" or "criminal justice major" look very weird to me when hyphenated as "real-estate agent" and "criminal-justice major," and Ngrams seems to agree.

Is there anything going on other than "the commonest forms don't use hyphens"?

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  • The hyphen might make the difference between "networking of high society" or "high networking of society" Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 8:50
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    See this question, although if you're asking specifically about following the Chicago Manual of Style rather than general English usage, can you make that clear. (Not everyone agrees with CMoS but if it's your job/assignment to follow it, then you must.) english.stackexchange.com/questions/299652/…
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 9:59
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    Does this answer your question? Is it correct to hyphenate with compound premodifiers? If so, where is the hyphen placed? Essentially, the simple rule we'd all love to discover doesn't exist. Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 11:55
  • There is no real answer to this question. Hyphenation is a transitional stage between two separate words that are a common collocation and a single word that carries a specific meaning. Old English was an agglutinative language and words were freely compounded but Modern English – probably because of Norman French influence - tends towards being synthetic language and there is a reluctance to combine words. This reluctance causes confusion: some adopt the hyphen, some reject it, some vacillate, and the occasional brave soul combines.
    – Greybeard
    Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 12:06
  • I'd treat "high-society" as a compound adjective in your example by virtue of the fact that the component parts can't enter separately into relations of coordination and modification. For example, we can hardly say "high and low society" nor "high rich society"
    – BillJ
    Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 15:08

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