Saturday, July 21, 2007

Solid compound adjectives

There are some well-established permanent compound adjectives that have become solid over a longer period, especially in American usage: earsplitting, eyecatching, and downtown.

However, in British usage, these, apart from downtown, are more likely written with a hyphen: ear-splitting, eye-catching.

Other solid compound adjectives are for example:

Numbers that are spelled out and have the suffix -fold added: "fifteenfold", "sixfold".
Points of the compass: northwest, northwester, northwesterly, northwestwards, but not North-West Frontier.

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