Questions tagged [compound-adjectives]
A compound adjective is when two or more adjectives are combined to modify a noun. In many instances, such compounds are hyphenated.
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Hyphenation of compound adjective or quantifier when referring back to antecedent
Example: She ate one or more apples, and each apple of the one-or-more apples was either red or green.
In the example, if "one or more apples" is the antecedent, should the reference back (i....
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Do we need to hyphenate the compund noun if it is given as an object complement? [duplicate]
I have a question about hyphenating compound nouns when they function as object complements. For instance, should entertainment oriented be hyphenated in below sentence?
Much of the radio programming ...
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Which contexts warrant the use of prepositional phrases over stacked adjectives, and vice versa?
Are there good reasons to use, e.g., "customer relationship management solution" over "solution for customer relationship management"?
I understand that in certain contexts ...
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Why "factor" is not plural in "two-factor authentication?" [duplicate]
In Information Technology, we often see something that looks like a compound adjective, pairing a number and a noum. Some examples are two-factor authentication, two-step verification and twelve-...
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How should I punctuate a phrasal adjective with additional adjective before the noun?
I am trying to discover the correct hyphenation and/or comma placement for the following sentence relating to honey bees:
When she hatches out of her egg, she is placed into a royal jelly filled ...
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Correct hyphenation in compound adjective
I want to rephrase
The costs they compute are weighted by time intervals.
by
They compute time interval-weighted costs.
The question is, what is the correct hyphenation?
time interval weighted
...
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Citizenship name order
If I'm a dual citizenship holder, which one comes first? Is there an ordering to it?
For example, if I receive a Canadian citizenship and I hold an Italian citizenship, am I Italian-Canadian or ...
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"health product industry" or "health-product industry"? [duplicate]
I would have written "health-product industry", but Googling makes "health product industry" seem more common. I thought that if we created a compound adjective ("health-...
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What is the term for phrases that are compound adjectives, similar to "come-hither look", "high-school-teaching voice"? [duplicate]
I know the etymology, and although it's listed as a noun, merriam-webster tells me the definition, but I want to know the name of this sort of adjective.
Wiktionary has it grouped as English ...
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Is Hyphen a must with compound adjectives? [duplicate]
I have following sentence on a product packaging as a tagline.
Easy to use kitchen tools to simplify your workload.
I've asked a few native speakers and they said, that "Easy to use" would ...
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The opposite of requiring a critical mass, being able to bootstrap from ground?
I am looking for an adjective for my system. I try to define the property that the system can bootstrap without requiring a critical mass of adoption. Meaning it can start functioning from zero and ...
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Is it a "Spanish-language movie" or a "Spanish language movie"?
As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong): "Spanish" is a proper noun and therefore must be capitalized; "Spanish-language" in this case is a compound adjective and those ...
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Relative reduced adjective phrase rephrased as Compound Adjective
Balloon filled with gas = gas-filled balloon
Infested with mosquito = mosquito-infested
Covered in/with snow = snow-covered
Necklace studded with diamonds = diamond studded
Deprived of sleep = sleep-...
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Is it correct to say 'a four doored car'?
If I describe a motor car as a 'four door car' I am making 'door' an adjective. It forms a compound adjective with the word 'four' and it adjectivally describes an attribute of the car, and is ...
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How does the noun cause the suffix of compound adjectives to change?
I'm comparing the names of bird species with similar compound adjectives. In some cases, the first word of the compound adjective changes with different nouns.
Some examples:
Silver-throated Tanager
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A four- or five-time(s)-a-year indulgence
Page 693 of Garner's Modern English reads
When two phrasal adjectives have a common element at the end, and this
ending portion appears only with the second phrase, insert a
suspensive hyphen after ...
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Repetition of "one" as number and pronoun
I am wondering about repetitions related to the use of the word one as a pronoun and as a number inside an adjectival compound.
Here are two examples:
My friend ordered a two-scoop cone, while a got ...
user410947
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'Extra-high-voltage grid' or 'extra-high voltage grid'?
I've seen both used interchangeably, and can't decide which is best. Given that both adjectives modify the noun, should two hyphens not be used? Thanks!
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Synonym of "less formal"
As casual conversation simply means an idle chatter, I wanted to know of a word which means a "formal talk". Not completely formal, but rather a word for a conversation where people talk ...
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Why do we use "at" in the phrase "good at [doing]"
In English, why do we use "at" in phrases such as "good at [doing something]", "terrible at [doing something]", etc.?
I'm trying to think of an example of how "at&...
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Was this subject complement diagrammed correctly?
The sentence is the following. I'm focusing on the part in bold:
Feeding the goats is messy and time consuming.
It's in this book.
The author provides the following diagram:
And I think it should ...
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Does "easily-going" exist?
I'm studying English compound word patterns and "easily-going" is mentioned as an example of a compound adjective formed by an ADVERB + PRESENT PARTICIPLE. But it sounds too odd to me. I've ...
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How to hyphenate “small-gap short-period long devices”?
I would like to use a compound adjective for the word "devices", but I don't know how to place the hyphen. Does small-gap short-period long devices sound correct?
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Could someone deconstruct this sentence and explain where it is right or wrong grammatically?
The sentence is:
I'm of the fuck covid opinion.
A friend of mine stated it and I would like to know if someone could explain why it should or should not be written differently.
user412429
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Can a compound modifier include a verb or be a sentence?
Recently, my significant other and I were sharing our reactions to an image of someone who looked much older than they actually were on social media. We were texting each other.
I captioned the ...
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Should a two-word noun that modifies be hyphenated?
I came across the sentence "He is Fibonacci spiral attractive," and my first thought was that "Fibonacci spiral" should be hyphenated. I consulted my sister, and she thought it ...
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Compound modifier with adverb [duplicate]
In the phrase "highly trained support specialist" should a hyphen be used?
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“Half an hour” and “half hour” adverbs
If the rate per hour is the hourly rate, what do you call the rate for half an hour? What is the rate for 2 hours known as?
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what's the difference between "correctly-sized packet" vs. "correct-size packet."
The sentence is the following:
[...] It allows you to request transfers of any size. Internally, the
request will be divided up into correctly-sized packets. [...]
Sometimes I read adjectives ...
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Hyphenate 3/4 word compound adjective
The phrase I don't know how to hyphenate is
asset type specific keywords and patterns
and the negated version
non asset type specific keywords and patterns.
I looked around and found this Q&A ...
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Phrasal verbs as hyphenated adjectives
So I recently had a question of how to translate a seemingly simple phrase which gave rise to a really puzzling dilemma. The phrase itself was "the eye which had been operated on", it was ...
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Which one is a correct way to write: a) two functions problems, or b) two-function problems?
I am wondering which of the following are grammatically correct?
Example sentence:
a) We evaluate two-function problems in the example.
b) We evaluate two functions problems in the example.
If none of ...
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Why is "more complicated" typically not hyphenated as a compound modifier when before a noun?
In the phrase "employees for more complicated work," shouldn't "more complicated" be hyphenated as it comes before the noun it describes?
After much searching online, I am yet to ...
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Adjective word or phrase to mean "We built it for ourselves"
I'm having a bit of a block here. I'm trying to describe a piece of machinery. It doesn't exist anywhere else. We didn't build it, but we designed it to maximize our productivity. It only exists in ...
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"Back to school" as an adjective or noun
What would be a good noun to call a person who deliberately, willfully makes a "back to school" trip to get a refresher on a subject (like geometry, calculus, biology)? Humorous nouns and ...
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Adjectival forms composed with -like with a substantive or an adjective
I want to describe a process that, although not industrial, behaves closely to industrial processes. I have an hesitation between a description with "industrial-like process" or "...
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Is it "multi-element" or "multi-elemental"? "Multi-attribute" or "multi-attributed"?
I've seen both being used, so I'm having a hard time telling which one is correct. Logic dictates that it's supposed to be "multi-elemental" and "multi-attributed," considering we ...
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Is there a name for phrases like "faint of heart" or "fleet of foot"?
I've noticed that English seems to have a set of adjectival phrases like "faint of heart", "fleet of foot", "narrow of mind", or "strong of will" of the form {...
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Two compound adjectives together [duplicate]
If we want to use compound adjectives like "result-oriented" and "client-oriented" together to describe a person, how do we use the hyphen?
A result and client-oriented person.
A ...
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Noun + Past Participle Usage
DCR(Dark Current Rate) represents the base noise level of a SPAD caused by parasitic avalanches happening in the dark due to thermal noise and band-to-band tunnelling effects.
I don't understand why ...
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When to use hyphen before “themed”
I understand cases where the concept modifying “themed” is a noun:
“A Star Wars–themed party”
But when the theme is an adjective, which of the following would be correct?
“A spooky-themed party”
“A ...
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Any suggestions on how to romantically describe a woman's brown hair? [closed]
Does anyone know a heartfelt, romantic way to describe the brown hair of a woman/girl? For now, all I have is "silky brown hair," but it just doesn't flow in my poem. This is not official, ...
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"Faster than" using with Future Simple
I'm just wondering if it is right to say that
I'll learn English faster than they will translate this book
=or
I'll learn English earlier than they will translate this book
I'm confused about ...
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How to use quality control as an adjective?
I'm looking for some synonym expression to convey the fact that a method, or a tool, provides quality controlled output. Or, in other words, that the output produced with such tool is quality ...
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Hyphenated adjective vs non-hyphenated adjective (when saying the entity has the thing)
I am still a bit confused about what the senses of these two nouns are: 1. White-tiled counter 2. White tiled counter. Does the one with no hyphen actually exist?
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Is this a compound adjective, and if so, what parts of it should be capitalized in a title? [duplicate]
I am currently proofreading some documents which go by the title "Pre and Post Visit Materials". For the life of me, I can't decide whether "post visit" counts as a compound ...
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What is a compound adjective for "chemical + colloidal"?
I am trying to figure out what would be the correct compound adjective which I can use instead of "chemical and colloidal". I would expect it to be similar to "physicochemical". ...
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How do I write "something-based", where "something" is more than one word? [duplicate]
I want to write "unsupervised learning based method", where "based" is referring to unsupervised learning. That is, it's (unsupervised learning)-based method, not unsupervised (learning-based methog). ...
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How to hyphenate a whole number and fraction as an adjectival modifier
When a fraction is used as part of a compound adjective it is conventionally hyphenated: e.g. a quarter-million pounds.
And when a whole number and a fraction are used together, it is conventional to ...
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Adjectives describing quantity
What is the difference between indefinite adjectives and adjectives of quantity.
Are indefinite adjectives and adjectives of quantity are same.
