The Luscious Complexities of Compounding

Perhaps you remember your grade-school, English teachers mentioning “compound words” when you were first learning to read and write. Not a lovely word, “compound,” but Oh! What loveliness you might compound, should you attempt to coin new words from two.

I’m a proponent of compound nouns. And definitely a champion of compound adjectives. Compounds may either be practical in their usage, or aesthetic, sometimes both.

People like to name things. When we invent new objects, we need new names. As did David Misell, the maker of the flashlight (pat. 1899, American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Co.), for instance. By sliding a switch on the side of a tube to make contact with zinc-carbon batteries, this new object could be made to flash on a beam of intermittent light. When naming his invention, Misell first called it an “electric device.” Not a very interesting name. North American users of Missell’s electric devices quickly came to call them flashlights because the cheap, carbon-filament bulbs would only flash the light on briefly before having to “rest” at regular intervals.

Okay, so this anecdote is an example of utilitarian compound usage. It’s a practical word-union. Other similar, matter-of-fact compounds are words such as armchair, gooseneck (lamp), featherbed, and grapefruit. Mundane, yes, but why does this process excite me?

In my mind, it’s a powerhouse concept to compound words to create new meaning, because the same principle behind naming inventions can be employed with far greater, aesthetic attention. The beauty of compounding is that almost everyone will be able to comprehend the advent of new words made up of two, already familiar words.

But here’s what I’m most excited by: compound nouns and adjectives can be the exotic jewels of your poetry and lyric prose. In your practice of writing, try to consciously use existing compounds with aural, visual, and conceptual beauty. Superheroes, snowflakes, lustreware, catnip, dandelion, butterflies. Then try, also, to coin your own word-combinations. The amalgamations are practically boundless.

My dad, himself a fan of philosophy, classic literature and poetry, years ago shared with me his admiration for the writing style of philosopher and educator, Loren Eiseley. While I, too, admire Eiseley’s lyric prose, the singular aspect of his writing style that still resonates for me was his delight in crafting compounds. The way my Dad introduced this to me was through his review of a piece of my own lyric composition. In one line of a stanza, I’d written about sowing “the seeds of dreams.” Dad suggested that if I were to borrow from Eiseley’s craft, I might compound the phrasing to “sowing dreamseeds.” Ah! I was struck then and there by the genius of this melodic economy. You can see quite easily how this has worked, in practice, for centuries: "the light of the moon (sun, star...)" becomes moonlight, sunlight, starlight.

Whenever a similar, new opportunity to combine such beauty arises, in either my own or a client’s passage, you can be sure I pursue its flowering likelihood.

Of course, there’s another reason that single-word compounds, as well as hyphenated compounds, make practical sense; these visual cues help to aid comprehension. Strings of two-and-three-word nouns and adjectives can make for some awkward sentences. Knowing when to punctuate, hyphenate, and/or compound can bring sparkling clarity to otherwise muddy or ambiguous images.

“It was a flag ship cruiser moored at the dock side boat show.”

Was it a flagship cruiser, a flag, ship cruiser, or a flag ship-cruiser? Was it moored at the dockside, boat show, the dockside-boat show, the dock sideboat show, or the dock, side boatshow?

Now you’re getting my drift . . .

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