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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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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Hyphenation of compound or phrasal adjectives
The following usage of hyphenation all seems correct to me, but I wanted verification that this is correct, since use of hyphenation in compound adjectives doesn't seem to commonly follow this pattern....
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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 ...
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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 ...
user398789
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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.
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Of or pertaining to algebraic geometry [closed]
Mathematicians do this one way, but I'd like the opinion of the ELU community: how do you turn algebraic geometry into an adjective phrase?
Mathematicians say
We solved the problem using algebro-...
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What part of speech do the quoted constructions belong to? [duplicate]
This yoghurt is ...
"getting out of these shoes" good
"not catching the bouquet" good,
"not getting stuck with a groom's man shorter than you" good.
I have found no articles on this sort of (it ...
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Can a phrasal adjective be placed AFTER a noun? [closed]
If phrasal adjectives can be placed after nouns, what are some examples?
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Can you put past participle adjectives in plural form?
My teacher said the word 'grownup' can become 'grownups' but if it's written as two separate words 'grown up' with no hyphen it changes into 'growns up'.
It doesn't sound right to me and I tried to ...
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Why do grammars claim that adjective+adjective is always a morphological compound and never a syntactic construction?
According to CGEL (and all other sources I looked at so far, such as Quirk et al. and Biber et al.), the following are morphological compounds, i.e. compound adjectives, and not syntactic composites ...
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Strings like 'open-minded': how are they classified?
How are strings like 'open-minded' regarded?
If you say they're participles, I ask of which verb ('to open-mind' or 'to mind'? With which meaning then? Is there a meaning of 'to mind' like 'to provide ...
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How to construct the -ish form of a compund adjective? [closed]
Will it be yellow-greenish, yellowish-greenish or yellowish-green?
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Is 'a 210-million-people market' correctly written? [duplicate]
Usually I find compound adjectives quite straightforward, but I'm not so sure when it comes to the following:
A 210-million-people market
So how should I refer to a market 210 million people large ...
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