Compound Words

What Are Compound Words?

Imagine a feast of cheesecake, jellybeans, watermelon, cupcakes, meatballs, and strawberries. What do all of these foods have in common, besides being delicious? The names for these foods are all compound words.

Compound words are made up of two or more smaller words that are combined to make a new word with its own meaning. The smaller words that form a compound word are like puzzle pieces you fit together to create a new bigger picture. Take the words milk and shake. If we fit these pieces together, we get the compound word milkshake.

All this talk about food is making me hungry. Can you think of other foods that are compound words? What about doughnut? The ingredients for this compound word are the smaller words dough and nut.

Types of Compound Words

Not all compound words are put together the same way. There are three types of compound words: closed, open and hyphenated.

• Closed compound words are made up of two words without a space in-between. Examples of closed compound words are: moonlight, classroom, and sunflower.
• Open compound words have a space between the smaller words that make them up. Even though the words seem separate, when you read them together they have a new meaning. Full moon is an open compound word. When we read the smaller separate words 'full' and 'moon' together, they have a new, unique meaning.
• Hyphenated compound words are formed by using a hyphen, a small dash used to connect words together. Numbers like fifty-nine and twenty-one are hyphenated compound words.

Word Detective

Tracking down clues, solving mysteries, the life of a detective sounds pretty exciting. Many compound words let you play word detective. Sometimes you can use the smaller words that make up a compound word as clues to its meaning.

Let's start with an easy one. Can you solve the mystery of the meaning of the compound word 'goldfish' by using its pieces as clues? First, identify the smaller words that make up the word goldfish. Gold + fish= goldfish. Next, define each word. Gold is a yellowish-brown color. Fish is an animal that lives in water. Lastly, put the definitions together. So, goldfish means a fish that is the color of gold.

Let's continue to use our detective skills to figure out the definition of the compound word 'superhuman' by using its parts as clues. Super + human = superhuman. What does 'super' mean? Extraordinary or excellent. We all know what it means to be human. Putting these meanings together, we can figure out that to be 'superhuman' is to act in a way that is above and beyond what humans normally do.

All great detectives know that some cases are trickier to solve than others. It is not always easy to tell the meaning of a compound word from its parts. If you just used its parts as clues, what would you think a butterfly is? Butter + fly = butterfly/ I don't know about you, but I've never seen a flying stick of butter! Butterfly is an example of a compound word that has its own unique meaning that goes beyond the meaning of the words that make it up.

More Examples

Riddle me this, can you solve these riddles that use compound words?

What is black and white and read all over?

A newspaper!

News + paper = newspaper

What do you get when you cross a big dog with a snowman?

A frostbite!

This riddle has two compound words. Can you spot them?

Snow + man = snowman

Frost + bite = frostbite