What is Compound Noun? (with examples) | Best English Guide 2021

What is Compound Noun?

Compound Noun is a type of noun in which two or more words are combined to give a specific meaning to a thing, place, etc. For example toothpaste, raincoat, bus stop, keyboard, mouse pad, bookshelf, face cream, army tank, cowboy, six-pack, etc.

Mostly in Compound Nouns (words), the first word always describes (refers or indicates) the second word and the second word gives the main idea or purpose.

For example, consider the word “toothbrush” –> (tooth + brush).

Here you can observe that the first word “tooth” describing the second word that it is something related to the teeth and the second word “brush” gives the clear purpose or idea.

The same thing goes for the toothpaste also –> (tooth + paste).

Also Read: Noun Definition and Examples | Best English Guide 2021

Types of Compound Noun

Usually, Compound Noun is categorised into three types. Those are,

• Closed (or) solid (or) single word — no spaces and hyphens.
• Open (or) spaced (or) two word — Only spaces and no hyphens.
• Hyphenated words — Only hyphens and no spaces.

Closed/Solid/Single Words

The words which don’t have any spaces or hyphens between them are called as “Closed Word”. Examples are suitcase, crosswords, smartphone, keyboard, haircut, toothbrush, helipad, etc.

You can observe that the above given words doesn’t have any spaces and hyphens between them.

Open/Spaced/two words

The words which have spaces but don’t have hyphens between them are called “Open Words”. Examples are School bell, post office, formal shoes, speed breaker, ice cream, plastic bag, etc.

Since these words doesn’t have hyphens but have space between them.

Hyphenated Words

The words which have hyphens between them are called as “Hyphenated Word” (simply called as “hyphen words”). These words don’t have spaces between them because hyphens are used in the spaces.

Examples are son-in-law, t-shirt, mother-in-law, e-mail, up-to-date, co-operation, good-looking, etc.

Rules of Compound Noun

The combined words which are used in Compound Noun can have various types of forms (parts of speech) like,

• noun + noun
• adjective + noun
• verb (-ing) + noun
• verb + preposition
• noun + prepositional phase
• preposition + noun
• noun + adjective

POS 1	+ POS 2	Example
noun	noun	raincoat
adjective	noun	smartphone
verb	noun	running shoes
verb	preposition	check-out
noun	prepositional phrase	son-in-law
preposition	noun	underground
noun	adjective	successful

Plural Forms of Compound Noun

Usually, Compound Noun have two forms. That is Singular Compound Noun and Plural Compound Noun.

Singular Compound Noun refers to a thing, place, etc., whereas Plural Compound Noun refers to more than one things, places, etc.

Now let us see the examples of these forms given in the table below.

Singular Compound Noun	Plural Compound Noun
bus stop	bus stops
ice cream	ice creams
paper clip	paper clips
waterfall	waterfalls
movie ticket	movie tickets
radio wave	radio waves
formal shoe	formal shoes
bookshelf	bookshelves
banana leaf	banana leaves
butterfly	butterflies
brother-in-law	brothers-in-law
father-in-law	fathers-in-law

Some important points that you need to remember:

• If you want to make a word Plural, then you need to add “-s” to the base word (mostly the second word).
• If the words are ending with -s, -ss, -ch, -x, -f, and -o, then you need to add “-es” to the base word.
• For hyphenated words, you need to add “-s” to the base word. Don’t get confused for some words like father-in-law, mother-in-law, etc because their plurals are fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law.

Example Statement:

• Incorrect: Two of my mother-in-laws stays at my house. (There are two mothers, not two laws)
• Correct: Two of my mothers-in-law stays at my house.

• If the words of the Compound Noun are in the form of Noun+adjective, then you can add “-s” or “-es” to noun or adjective as per the usage.

For example consider the below table.

Singular Form	PF (Noun)	(or)	PF (Adj)
glassful	glassesful	or	glassfuls
spoonful	spoonsful	or	spoonfuls
handful	handsful	or	handfuls
bucketful	bucketsful	or	bucketfuls

So, you can see that Plural form for hyphenated words can be used in both ways. You can consider plural form of noun or adjective because both of them are acceptable.

But we recommend you to use only one type of words (your choice – either plural form of noun or adjective) for the entire sentence or paragraphs.

Quiz Time! (Test your knowledge here)

Summary: (What is Compound Noun?)

• The combined words which represents a thing, animal, etc are called Compound Noun. Examples are paperclips, colour pencil, electric wire, cold drinks, etc.
• The Compound Nouns are classified into three types. Those are Closed words, Open words and hyphened words.
• The Compound Noun can have both Singular and Plural forms.

If you are interested to learn more, then you can refer from wikipedia by clicking here.

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