Compound Noun, Compound Adjective

Hyphenated compound nouns are fairly uncommon, but here’s an example, with a compound adjective after it. It’s a recent (February 10, 2023) Washington Post headline.

Biden ordered [a/the] shoot-down of a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska airspace

Headlines tend to be terse, so I added the articles in the brackets to make it easier to see that they combined a verb and a preposition to make a “shoot-down” into a noun. In English, compound nouns tend to migrate from being hyphenated (such as “pick-up”) to being a single word (pickup) as they become more common. We don’t say “a shoot-down” very often.

You can easily tell that “high-altitude” is an adjective because it refers to “object.”

Sorry, no picture of the object yet. [later] Okay, here’s a photo. The balloon is the white circular object.

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Another one of my hobbyhorses.

• Present and future tense of “lay” is transitive. It takes a direct object. You lay something down.
• “Lie” is intransitive. He wants the dogs to lie down.

Or “why I say ‘correct’ instead of ‘right.'”

A motto I have posted on my office wall says “Ambiguity is the enemy of good documentation.

PS—this reminds me of the skit “Who’s on First?”

People so often say they can’t wait when the mean that they can hardly wait. These guys got their phrasing right. Don’t say that you can’t wait unless that’s what you mean.

Here’s a good example that shows the difference between hyphenated and unhyphenated adjectives. Here’s the a headline:

Axios AM: Fake burger crash

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-02b0d9c0-ca6c-4ae0-b862-a72a69f97955.html

So what’s fake? The burger (fake burger) or the crash? (fake crash)

Turns out when you look at the article that has this headline, it’s fake burgers that crash for real.

You need the hyphen to tie “fake” and “burger” together! It’s “fake-burger crash.”

Here’s the picture that goes with the article: