Hyphenate

//ˈhaɪf(ə)ˌneɪt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person or object with multiple duties, abilities or characteristics, such as "writer-director", "actor-model", or "singer-songwriter".
  2. 2
    A person whose ethnicity is a multi-word hyphenated term, such as "African-American".

    "We seem to have settled on African-American, and at first glance it certainly does seem logical. […] Not to mention what happens when hyphenates marry other hyphenates and have baby hyphenates."

Verb
  1. 1
    to break a word at the end of a line according to the hyphenation rules by adding a hyphen on the end of the line. transitive
  2. 2
    divide or connect with a hyphen wordnet
  3. 3
    to join words or syllables with a hyphen. transitive

    "you have to hyphenate his surname as it's double-barrelled"

Synonyms

All synonyms
analyzebracketcitizencitizen by adoptionconjugatecosmopolitan

Example

More examples

"you have to hyphenate his surname as it's double-barrelled"

Etymology

Etymology 1

From hyphen + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Etymology 2

From hyphen + -ate (noun-forming suffix).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.