16.    Compound nouns

A .    Examples of these:

1     Noun + noun:

London Transport        Fleet Street            Tower Bridge

hall door                     traffic warden        petrol tank

hitch-hiker                   sky-jacker              river bank

kitchen table                winter clothes

2     Noun + gerund:

fruit picking                 lorry driving          coal-mining

weight-lifting                bird-watching        surf-riding

3     Gerund + noun:

waiting list                   diving-board          driving licence

landing card                dining-room           swimming pool

B.     Some ways in which these combinations can be used:

1      When the second noun belongs to or is part of the first:

shop window          picture frame       college library

church bell             garden gate         gear lever

But words denoting quantity: lump, part, piece, slice etc. cannot be used in this way:

a piece of cake      a slice of bread

2     The first noun can indicate the place of the second:

city street      corner shop      country lane      street market

3     The first noun can indicate the time of the second:

summer holiday          Sunday paper      November fogs

spring flowers             dawn chorus

4     The first noun can state the material of which the second is made'

steel door          rope ladder          gold medal

stone wall         silk shirt

wool and wood are not used here as they have adjective forms: woollen and wooden, gold has an adjective form golden, but this is used only figuratively:

a golden handshake      a golden opportunity      golden hair The first noun can also state the power/fuel used to operate the second:

gas fire      petrol engine      oil stove

5     The first word can indicate the purpose of the second:

coffee cup               escape hatch         chess board

reading lamp          skatmg rink         tin opener

golf club                 notice board         football ground

6     Work areas, such as factory, farm, mine etc , can be preceded by the name of the article produced:

fish-farm       gold-mine      oil-rig or the type of work done:

inspection pit     assembly plant      decompression chamber

7     These combinations are often used of occupations, sports, hobbies and the people who practise them:

sheep farming        sheep farmer        pop singer wind surfing          water skier          disc jockey

and for competitions'

football match      tennis tournament      beauty contest      car rally

8     The first noun can show what the second is about or concerned with. A work of fiction may be a detective/murder/mystery/ghost/horror/spy story. We buy bus/tram/plane tickets. We pay fuel/laundry/

milk/telephone bills, entry fees, income tax, car insurance, water rates, parking fines.

Similarly with committees, departments, talks, conferences etc : housing committee, education department, peace talks

9     These categories all overlap to some extent They are not meant to be mutually exclusive, but aim to give the student some general idea of the uses of these combinations and help with the stress.

C.     As will be seen from the stress-marks above:

1     The first word is stressed in noun + gerund and gerund + noun combinations, when there is an idea of purpose as in B5 above, and in combinations of type B7 and B8 above.

2     Both words are usually stressed in combinations of types Al, Bl-3 above, but inevitably there are exceptions.

3     In place-name combinations both words usually have equal stress:

 King's Road      Waterloo Bridge      Leicester Square But there is one important exception. In combinations where the last word is Street, the word Street is unstressed'

Bond Street        Oxford Street