513. Compound Adjectives

Sometimes two adjectives work together to describe a noun. We often place a hyphen (-) between the two adjectives. We call these hyphenated adjectives compound adjectives.

Here are some examples of compound adjectives:
middle-aged
well-known
never-ending
old-fashioned
out-of-the-way

That middle-aged man just started working at our company.
I heard he lives in an out-of-the-way place.
His well-known sister lives next store to me.
She has old-fashioned ideas about clothing.

A compound adjective is two or more words connected by hyphens and all describing the same noun.

▶Now you try it. Find the compound adjective in this sentence: I have to write a 750-word essay for English class. That wasn’t too hard, was it?