ABSTRACT
The most common and most flexible way of creating new words in English is to put two old words together to form a new word, a compound. A COMPOUND can be defined, rather loosely, as a lexeme which is made up of two (or more) other lexemes (on lexemes, see Chapter 2). So blackbird, childproof, headline, typewrite, wallpaper are compounds. By this definition, girlfriend is also a compound. But while this is the spelling given by Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language and the 9th edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary gives the spelling girl friend. If we take the spelling seriously, we might be led to conclude that this particular item is one word for the editors of Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language but two for the editors of Webster's Third New International Dictionary. This would seem to be an inconsistent conclusion. And what about the editors of the 7th edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary who give the spelling girl-friend? Does hyphenation count as one word or two? Since girl friend, girl-friend and girlfriend all behave identically in everything except spelling, it seems more sensible to include them all under the same heading. They will accordingly all be called compound words in what follows, despite the possible intervening space.
