Definition:
The process of combining two words to create a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective). See also:
Etymology:
From the Latin, "put together"Examples and Observations:
- "Compounds are not limited to two words, as shown by examples such as bathroom towel-rack and community center finance committee. Indeed, the process of compounding seems unlimited in English: starting with a word like sailboat, we can easily construct the compound sailboat rigging, from which we can in turn create sailboat rigging design, sailboat rigging design training, sailboat rigging design training institute, and so on."
(Adrian Akmajian, R. Demers, A. Farmer, and R. Harnish, Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication, MIT Press, 2001) - "[In most compounds] the rightmost morpheme determines the category of the entire word. Thus, greenhouse is a noun because its rightmost component is a noun, spoonfeed is a verb because feed also belongs to this category, and nationwide is an adjective just as wide is. . . . .
"English orthography is not consistent in representing compounds, which are sometimes written as single words, sometimes with an intervening hyphen, and sometimes as separate words. In terms of pronunciation, however, there is an important generalization to be made. In particular, adjective-noun compounds are characterized by a more prominent stress on their first component. . . .
"A second distinguishing feature of compounds in English is that tense and plural markers cannot typically be attached to the first element, although they can be added to the compound as a whole. (There are some exceptions, however, such as passers-by and parks supervisor.)"
(William O'Grady, J. Archibald, M. Aronoff, and J. Rees-Miller, Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
Pronunciation: KOM-pownd-ing
