Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Structure of Compound Nouns

English has many compound nouns. They can be open (ice cream), closed (classroom) or hyphenated (self-esteem). Compound nouns usually consist of two nouns but other combinations are possible. Here is a list of closed compound nouns:

  • blueberry
  • breakfast
  • grandparents
  • highway
  • inside
  • outdoors
  • snowball
  • sunrise
  • teammate
  • underwater
  • takeover
  • waterfall
Here is the structure of the respective compound nouns:

blue (A) + berry (N)
break (V) + fast (N)
grand (A) + parents (N)
high (A) + way (N)
in (P) + side (N)
out (P) + doors (N)
snow (N) + ball (N)
sun (N) + rise (V)
team (N) + mate (N)
under (P) + water (N)
take (V) + over (P)
water (N) + fall (N)

Many compound nouns combine two nouns into one. This is the case with compounds such as snowball. However, as the list demonstrates, compound nouns also consist of adjectives, verbs and prepositions.


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