Supressed suffix -- possible?

Question

In my native language we have a construct where we can omit suffixes from combined words to compress a sentence. For example, something like this:

The juice is banana- and apple-based.

Here the "-based" after banana is implicit. Is this legal in English too?

I think it's perfectly acceptable - I see this kind of construction used a lot. — stangdon, Mar 05 '17 at 17:23

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '17 at 19:55

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Yes, "my favourite juice is apple and banana" is valid because you have already stated that it is juice. Likewise, if someone asked "what is your favourite juice" you could just say "apple and banana".

answered Mar 05 '17 at 19:55

Peter Morris

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 04 '17 at 02:36

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Yes, this totally correct, and so is your orthography. You want to have a trailing hyphen after all modifiers except for the last (e.g. "Students may enroll in one-, two-, or three-week courses.")

answered Nov 04 '17 at 02:36

bertday

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Supressed suffix -- possible?

2 Answers2