hyphen

«hyphen» in Mova's school dictionary: a short line (-) used to join words or parts of words… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a hyphen, hyphens); verb (hyphenate — to join with a hyphen)

meaning for a pupil

1) A hyphen is a short line (-) used to join words or parts of words together, as in «well-known» or «twenty-one». tree →

2) A hyphen is also used at the end of a line when a word is split and goes on to the next line. tree →

sense in the lessons

In English grammar and punctuation lessons (and SATs) you learn to use hyphens in compound numbers (thirty-four), in compound adjectives before a noun (a man-eating shark), with some prefixes (re-enter, co-owner) and to avoid confusion (re-cover a sofa versus recover from illness). In writing a hyphen can change the meaning: «a little-used car» and «a little used car» are different. Phrases: use a hyphen, joined by a hyphen, hyphenated word.

examples

• Twenty-one has a hyphen in it. tree →
• Put a hyphen in «well-known» when it comes before a noun. tree →
• The word was too long, so the printer split it with a hyphen. tree →
• My name is double-barrelled, with a hyphen in the middle. tree →
• Is «e-mail» written with a hyphen or without? tree →
• A man-eating shark is different from a man eating shark! tree →
• Re-enter has a hyphen so the two e's do not run together. tree →
• The teacher circled the missing hyphen. tree →

note

Countable: a hyphen, two hyphens. Pronounced «HY-fen». Trap: a hyphen (-) is shorter than a dash (– or —); a hyphen joins words, a dash separates parts of a sentence and has spaces around it in UK style. Do not confuse the hyphen with the minus sign in maths, which looks similar but means subtract. Compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine take a hyphen.

In the corpora

• A dash is longer than a hyphen and usually has a space on each side; a hyphen is short and has no spaces.
• Some hyphens stop two different words from looking the same: re-cover (cover again) and recover (get better).
• In British slang "well" means very, as in "I'm well tired"; no hyphen is needed there.
• Hyphens join all the parts of one number: quatre-vingt-huit is one number, 88, not four separate numbers.
• In France the weekend is le week-end, with a hyphen; in Quebec people often say la fin de semaine.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «hyphen» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.