Compound Words
Compound words, we use them all the time. They feel natural through usage and are being continuously coined. Seems to me though that we don’t get enough of them coined in fiction and poetry.
Anglo-Saxon poetry used compound words to avoid repetition of the same word. e.g. sea is referred to as ‘whale-road’, ‘swan-way’, ‘sail road’
Contemporary usage includes literally thousands of words, e.g. breakneck, paperclip, sandstorm, fingerprint, handbag
As an exercise would be interesting to coin and use new compound words, or assign new meaning to emerging compounds. Post whatever you can think of or have already come up with below, along with an example usage.
To get started, an emerging compound :
blogprint, meaning from blog to print.
Alternative : she left her blogprints all over her fiction.
Martin
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Comments
medicinal compounds....
Inspired by whale-roads as a name for the sea, I was trying to think of alternatives to 'motorway'. I came up with 'car-artery'
California mainlined the sticky black oil which coursed through its collapsed veins and clogged car-arteries....
Also other compound words already in existence:
cufflinks, moonlight, weblog (seems so old-fashioned to write the whole thing out), motorbike, cultureword (!), turnpike, earthquake, brainwash, corkscrew, pancake, uprising