Compound Nouns

- A compound noun is a noun which is made up of two or more words

- We can form a compound noun in different ways, by combining different parts of
speech:
 Noun+noun: bedroom, snowflake; bus stop/station
 Adjective+noun: blackboard, full moon, highway, blackmail
 Verb (-ing)+noun: washing machine, swimming pool
 Noun+verb: sunrise, haircut
 Preposition+noun: underground
 Noun+prepositional phrase: mother-in-law
 Adjective+verb: dry-cleaning

- Some of these compound nouns are written in one word (bathroom, basketball,
fingerprint), in separate words (car park) or they are written with a hyphen between
them (mother-in-law)

The Plural of Compound Nouns

- generally, we form the plural of the compound nouns by adding “s” or “es” to the “base
word” (in general, this “base word” is the last word of the compound):
Bedroom- bedrooms
Bus stop- bus stops
Washing machine- washing machines
Mother-in-law- mother-in-laws