Compound Adjectives

I have chosen to address the topic of formation of compound adjectives. Although combining words to modify nouns might seem straightforward, there are some rules and stylistic fine distinctions worth mentioning.

This topic caught my interest while I was preparing a written assignment for my poetry writing course. At that moment, I was unsure whether to use a hyphen between the words. This necessity for understanding led me to take a closer look at the compound adjectives and the process of their formation.

Compound adjectives are usually made up of two or more words and they are often written with hyphens between individual words, typically when they occur before the noun they modify. Some of the compound adjectives become so common that they do not need a hyphen anymore (e.g. 'database').

The most common types of hyphenated compound adjectives as defined by Alexander (1988)

Compound adjectives formed with:

• past participles, e.g. a candle-lit table, a tree-lined avenue
• present participles, e.g. a long-playing record
• -ed wordsformed from nouns, e.g. cross-eyed, open-minded

Compound adjectives of measurement:

• age: a thirty-year-old man
• area/volume: a four-acre plot
• duration: a two-hour meeting
• length/depth: a 5-foot hole
• price: a $50 bill (a fifty-dollar bill)
• time/distance: a twenty-minute ride
• weight: a ten-kilo bag of rice
• compounds containing ordinal numbers: a fourth-floor flat

Compound adjectives formed with prefixes and suffixes:

• e.g. tax-free, fire-resistant, tight-lipped
• 'well' and 'badly' prefixes, e.g. well-paid, badly-done
• 'ill' and 'poorly', e.g. ill-advised, poorly-informed

Type of classification for adjective compounds' formation as defined by Sinclair (1990)
The most common and least restricted patterns for forming compound adjectives:

• adjective or number + '-ed', e.g. grey-haired, one-sided
• adjective or adverb + past participle, e.g. low-paid, well-behaved
• adjective, adverb, or noun + present participle, e.g. good-looking, long-lasting, man-eating

Less common and more restricted patterns for forming compound adjectives:

• noun + past participle, e.g. tongue-tied
• noun + adjective, e.g. trouble-free
• adjective + noun, e.g. deep-sea
• past participle + adverb, e.g. run-down
• number + singular count noun, e.g. a five-page letter. These number + singular count noun compounds are always used attributively.

Classification of compound adjectives as defined by Sinclair (1990):

• compound qualitative adjectives, e.g. absent-minded, accident-prone, second-class, two-faced, low-cut
• compound classifying adjectives, e.g. brand-new, built-up, broken-down, made-up, free-range
• compound colour adjectives, e.g. blood-red, dove-grey, electric-blue, lime-green
• long compound adjectives - made up of more than two words. Compounds of three or more words are often hyphenated when used in front of nouns, e.g. out-of-the-way resort, and non-hyphenated when used as the complement of a linking verb. e.g. Their act is out of date.
• compounds containing words which are 'never used as single words on their own' (Sinclair, 1990, p. 85), e.g. his la-di-da family, arty-crafty spiritualism, higgledy-piggledy
• compounds borrowed from other languages, most frequently French and Latin, e.g. à la mode, bona fide, de jure, etc.

Sources:
Sinclair, J. (1990). Collins Cobuild English Grammar: Helping Learners with Real English. London: HarperCollins Publishers. pages: 83-85.
Alexander, L. G. (1988). Longman English Grammar. New York: Longman Inc. page: 107.