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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Morphology and Word Formation

Compound

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˈkɒmpaʊnd/nounCommon term

In linguistics & grammar, compound means: A word made by joining two or more words, such as classroom, mother-in-law or bus stop; it can be written as one word, with hyphens or as separate words.

In Turkish: birleşik sözcük, bileşik sözcük

How it is used

Compounding is one of the most productive ways to make new nouns in English. Noun compounds usually have stress on the first part: a GREENhouse (for plants) is different from a green HOUSE (a house painted green).

Example sentences

  1. 'Bus stop' is a compound even though it is written as two words.

  2. In the Turkish compound 'otobüs durağı', the second noun takes a suffix, unlike English 'bus stop'.

Common collocations

  • compound noun
  • compound word
  • compound adjective
  • form a compound
  • derivationThe process of making a new word from an existing one, usually by adding an affix, as when teach becomes teacher or happy becomes unhappy.
  • morphologyThe study of the internal structure of words: how they are built from smaller meaningful parts such as roots, prefixes and suffixes.
  • stressExtra force or length given to one syllable in a word, or to one word in a sentence, which makes it sound stronger and clearer than the others.
  • rootThe core part of a word that carries its basic meaning and cannot be broken into smaller meaningful parts, such as 'form' in reformation or 'kitap' in kitaplık.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Morphology and Word Formation

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