1269: Types of Compounds Jun 1, 2018

There are two types of compounds that are found in English. The first are the most common, and also they are the easiest to create on the spot. Synthetic compounds are words made up of the meaning of the sum of their elements, such as 'bookshelf' which is a shelf for books, or even German's famous rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which is just a string of nouns (beef labelling regulation and supervision law). On the other hand, idiomatic compounds are made up of parts which only make sense as a whole, such as 'butterfly'. This is similar to how idiomatic sentences like "it's raining cats and dogs' only make sense when looked at as a whole.