2026-10-14 20:00 UTC
Replies (4)
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@mkuha@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 20:45
@jbowen@mast.hpc.social I vaguely remember being taught that the ordinary process is that compounds start as "word word", become more established and "word-word", and then even more established and "wordword". If this is true, it could be that you happen to be noticing certain compounds in the third phase. But maybe it's not true.
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@ChasMusic@ohai.social 2026-10-14 21:58
@jbowen@mast.hpc.social I often vacillate on whether to compound a particular two-word phrase but can't call any to mind. Of course, "breakfast" is a historic example, and I have no qualms about fusing "earworm;" in fact I wouldn't even consider separating them.
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@timrichards@aus.social 2026-10-14 22:13
@jbowen@mast.hpc.social @futzle@old.mermaid.town Don’t know if they're on the rise, but they do tend to progress that way over time.
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@mkuha@mastodon.social 2026-10-15 00:41
@jbowen@mast.hpc.social Come to think of it, Google Ngram Viewer might help. Here we see that "blood work" occurred in print with some frequency before "bloodwork". Of course this might include some number of instances of "blood" and "work" landing side by side in a sentence without being a compound.