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Compound Adjectives in English Woodward English
Compound Adjectives in English Woodward English
Compound Adjectives in English Woodward English
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Compound Adjectives
Let’s look at the following sentences:
I saw a man-eating alligator.
I saw a man eating alligator.
YES! There is a big di erence. Let’s use some cartoons to show this.
Compound adjectives
As we have seen, a compound adjective is an adjective that contains two or more words
joined by a hyphen.
She is not just a famous singer in her country. She is also famous around the world so
she is a world-famous singer.
Big and Blue are adjectives so we do not put a hyphen between these two adjectives
This includes when one of the adjectives is already a compound adjective. Look at the
following:
But we have also included the adjective OLD because it is an old town.
We didn’t put a hyphen between the word old and coal because coal is part of the
compound adjective coal-mining.
In general we don’t put a hyphen between two adjectives, including if one of those is a
compound adjective.
So how can we make compound adjectives?
Which parts of speech can be a part of compound adjectives?
It is important to note that the period of time needs to be in singular form. five-minute
NOT five-minutes
Let’s look at the first example.
We do NOT put an S at the end of hour. We cannot say “I work an eight-hours day.” This
is NOT correct. The time period needs to be in its singular form.
This means that I work eight hours every day. There is an S at the end of hours in the
sentence on the right because it is not a compound adjective that goes before a noun.
Notice how we normally write the number as a word, not in numerical form, unless it is
a very large number.
And remember it is important NOT to add an S at the end of the compound adjective.
I had a three-week vacation NOT three-weeks vacation.
Number + Singular Noun
When we have a number before a noun in a compound adjective, that noun is always in
singular form. This not only applies to periods of time as we have already seen but with
other nouns too.
Some examples of compound adjectives that are made from a number + singular
noun include: five-minute, three-hour, ten-storey, one-way, twenty-page
Adjective + Noun
Some examples of compound adjectives that are made from an adjective + noun
include:
last-minute, full-length, short-term, long-distance, high-quality
I bought some mouth-watering strawberries.
That was a record-breaking jump.
I used to live in a Spanish-speaking country.
Noun + Adjective
Some examples of compound adjectives that are made from a noun + adjective
include:
world-famous, smoke-free, ice-cold, gluten-free, family-friendly