Disease-resistant viruses.
Viruses that are disease-resistant.
Is it true that they do not need to be hyphenated? It seemed to me that it is imperative that disease resistant need to be hyphenated in order to be a verb to describe viruses properly. However I seem to have been told the opposite now.
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You write "to be hyphenated in order to be a verb ...."
Did you mean "in order to be an adjective"?
Oh. Yep probably adjective
Thank you. Have a nice day!
If you know the answer, would be great to know. Thanks!
I am sure that one of the moderators will soon give us the answer.
@GrammerNazi posted:Disease-resistant viruses.
Viruses that are disease-resistant.
Is it true that they do not need to be hyphenated? It seemed to me that it is imperative that disease resistant need to be hyphenated in order to be a verb to describe viruses properly. However I seem to have been told the opposite now.
Hello, GrammerNazi,
There may be dialectal differences between AmE and BrE. On page 1569 of their Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Quirk et al say in relation to the spelling of compound words:
Practice varies in many words and some compounds may even occur in three different forms, 'solid', hyphenated, and 'open', e.g.:
a flower pot | a flower-pot | a flowerpot
[...]
In AmE, hyphenation is less common than in BrE, and instead we find the items open or solid (more usually the latter) where BrE may use a hyphen:
language retarded (esp AmE), language-retarded (esp BrE)
psychosomatic (esp AmE), psycho-somatic (esp BrE)
I think "disease-resistant" is a verbless compound adjective (called "verbless" because no verbs are involved in its formation) of the kind defined by Quirk under I.70, on page 1577 of the mentioned book:
This is a very productive type, especially with certain adjectives that have prepositional complementation, such as free (from), proof (against), weary (of). For example:
airsick, air-tight, camera-ready, carsick, dustproof, duty-free, fireproof, foolproof, homesick, oven-ready, tax-free, war-weary, watertight
As a matter of fact, "disease-resistant" derives from "resistant to diseases," and should therefore take a hyphen, in my opinion. Being so long, it would be absurd for anyone to use the solid form "diseaseresistant." At the same time, the open form "disease resistant" would be too loose to express the relationship between the two components. Notice that, with the noun, "disease" merely becomes an attribute of "resistance," so it would be incorrect to use a hyphen: disease resistance
Thank you, Gustavo, for that very informative explanation.
I thought that some members (and guests) might like to know that I find it very helpful to use the "Books" section of Google to see what published authors have written.
I have just gone to Google and typed in "disease-resistant" and then clicked on "More, " which took me to "Books." That section contains many examples of "disease-resistant" being used by reputable writers. There are also a few examples of simply "disease resistant."
Hi, TheParser,
Yes, GB is a good source to check the frequency of occurrence.
I think that, in this type of compounding, the hyphen is necessary, or at least advisable, because we don't expect a noun (disease) to modify an adjective (resistant). This is not the case with two nouns (disease resistance), where the first one is in attributive position to the other, which reflects, as you know, a widespread use in the English language.
The superiority of the hyphenated version is also confirmed by Ngram Viewer, which is in turn based on Google Books. Besides, many occurrences of "disease resistant" (without a hyphen) may be associated with a noun followed by an postposed adjective, in phrases like "disease resistant to antibiotics," which is an altogether different pattern.
Hi, everybody—Like Gustavo, I think the hyphen is adviseable in "disease-resistant." I find it very natural to use the hyphen there and would not hesitate to write it thus in any syntactic position in a post on this forum or in any other written communication, regardless of what I am about to say.
Technically, the hyphen is the most advisable in attributive position (a disease-resistant plant) and optional when the compound is in predicative position, that is, when it functions as the complement of a linking verb (The plant is disease resistant) or as an object complement (It makes the plant disease resistant).
From the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA):
disease-resistant (in attributive position): 103
disease resistant (in attributive position): 11
disease-resistant (in predicative position, etc.): 13
disease resistant (in predicative position, etc.): 32
Many thanks to David and Gustavo for excellent explanations and to GN for asking the question.
Awesome explanation.
