Hyphen - Varied Meanings

Varied Meanings

Some strong examples of semantic changes caused by the placement of hyphens:

  • Disease-causing poor nutrition, meaning poor nutrition that causes disease
  • Disease causing poor nutrition, meaning a disease that causes poor nutrition
  • A man-eating shark is a shark that eats humans.
  • A man eating shark is a man who is eating shark meat.
  • A blue-green sea is a sea whose color is somewhere between blue and green.
  • A blue green sea is a contradiction, unless "blue" or "green" are used contextually to mean something other than a color.
  • Three-hundred-year-old trees are an indeterminate number of trees that are 300 years old.
  • Three hundred-year-old trees are three trees that are 100 years old.
  • Three hundred year-old trees are 300 trees that are 1 year old.

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Famous quotes containing the words varied and/or meanings:

    “Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur’s work.”
    —Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)

    “Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.”
    —Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)