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The two-word expression originary interest does not need to be hyphenated.

However, should the four-word expression individual originary interest rate be hyphenated somewhere?

chagas
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  • Compound nouns are commonly hyphenated when used attributively (to modify other nouns) and not when used as nouns on their own. There are dozens of similar questions here, e.g. this – Stuart F Jun 30 '23 at 14:05
  • Probably e) individual pure-interest rate; but again as noted below, hyphens are not a requirement in this specific instance nor in most cases. They are very useful in reducing ambiguity but if there is little risk of ambiguity, then there is little need to use a hyphen. – Yorik Jun 30 '23 at 16:48
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    Is "originary interest" a technical term in some field? I don't believe I've encountered the word "originary" before. – phoog Jul 01 '23 at 17:22

1 Answers1

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Short answer - no.

The 'rules' around whether a compound noun should be hyphenated or not are extremely inconsistent, but compound nouns made from an adjective and a noun are not usually hyphenated, eg full moon, red tape, and your example, pure interest.

Occasionally you will find a compound noun that is not normally hyphenated, but which may be written with a hyphen in certain contexts. The usual reason for this is to avoid ambiguity. One example of this might be "bus stop". As it is a compound of two nouns but not joined together, it is inconsistently written - sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes without. But, if you were writing a sentence like "I made the bus stop" there would be an ambiguity - it could sound like you forced the vehicle to come to a stop, or that you reached the place where you wait for a bus. Using a hyphen would help you clarify you meant the latter.

With your example, there is no such ambiguity - it can only be understood one way, so there is no need to add a hyphen to a compound that does not normally have one.

Astralbee
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  • The hyphen is not a foolproof test for compoundhood. Most adj+noun compound nouns are not hyhenated, e.g. "commonwealth", "mainland", "blackbird", "hotbed" etc. – BillJ Jun 30 '23 at 15:27
  • I have no idea what these various permutations might mean, but I'd say if there's any ambiguity about how to parse individual pure interest rate it's probably more natural to either use an italic font to identify the word relationships (which I can't do here because I've already put the entire text in italics! :) OR just put "scare quotes" around the elements that should be seen as a unit, rather than hyphenating it. Hence individual "pure interest" rate. That's the written equivalent of speaking the quoted term more slowly / loudly, to call attention to it in its entirety. – FumbleFingers Jun 30 '23 at 15:28
  • But surely that's a "domain-specific" question that depends on knowing whether, for example, *pure interest* is a meaningful collocation. The only answer that you can expect here concerns the orthography of how to indicate any relevant "compound words" - if you're the one doing the writing, you should already know *which* words need to be grouped like that (if you don't, you shouldn't be using terms that you don't understand in the first place! :) – FumbleFingers Jun 30 '23 at 16:32
  • ...I just assumed *pure interest* was some domain-specific term equivalent or similar to *interest-only*, but it doesn't seem to have any currency, howsoever punctuated. Since it's not a "compound noun", you shouldn't be thinking about including hyphens at all. – FumbleFingers Jun 30 '23 at 16:38
  • As I keep saying, if you believe that "pure interest" is meaningfully a "compound noun", put quotes around it, otherwise don't. I'm not familiar with the terminology, but my gut feel is it's not a compound noun in the same way as "interest-only". And you will note that the sequence *pure interest repayments* has no currency, whereas *interest-only repayments* is very common. – FumbleFingers Jun 30 '23 at 17:26
  • @FumbleFingers 'Pure interest' can be found in the dictionary. It is a noun. It means interest on capital excluding payment for risk. It doesn't have a hyphen. I agree that putting a term in italics can help to highlight a term you are introducing in a text when you don't think the audience will have seen it before, but the OP here has a text where the term is introduced and then it is used in context again. You can't keep putting it in italics every time - that's just irritating. – Astralbee Jun 30 '23 at 19:45
  • @chagas As I said in my answer, there is no ambiguity in your examples. I don't see how there could be, because of the way the noun is constructed. Even if one didn't recognise this as a compound noun, the adjective 'pure' couldn't be acting on anything else, unless you saw "interest rate" as a noun, in which case the meaning would still be the same. And look - "pure interest" is in the dictionary. There's no reason to think this needs a hyphen to be any clearer than it is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pure%20interest – Astralbee Jun 30 '23 at 19:49