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When people say

They made the material corrosion resistant.

they mean corrosion resistant as an adjective. The word corrosion is only a noun, and resistant is both an adjective and a noun. But in this combination resistant isn't a noun, but an adjective.

The problem I have is that adjectives aren't formed as open Noun+Adjective forms. I think the correct form is corrosion-resistant. But people still write corrosion resistant without the hyphen.

So my question is: Is corrosion resistant without a hyphen correct or not? If it is correct, I would like to know why?

Edwin Ashworth
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Grammar Addict
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    With appears to be more popular, but the usage without appears to be pretty common – Elliott Frisch Dec 30 '16 at 04:58
  • See also https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11570/to-hyphenate-or-not/11622#11622 – Hellion Aug 19 '21 at 14:24
  • Also relevant: When should compound words be written with hyphens or with spaces? (but no compelling answers). Rules are: (1) use a hyphen to clarify if necessary (three hundred year-old oaks, three hundred-year-old oaks, three-hundred-year-old oaks). (2) If unnecessary, check in a dictionary or three. (3) If (2) unavailable, check for usage on the internet, using decent-looking examples. (4) Be ready to accept that either choice is legitimate ... and if so, choose. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 19 '21 at 14:46
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    Here, there are those (eg Grammarly) who would want the hyphen in an attributive usage ('a dog-friendly hotel'; 'corrosion-resistant material'; ...) but not in a predicative usage ('this hotel is dog friendly'; 'this material is corrosion resistant'). I'm not sure I don't prefer dog-friendly in both usages myself, but am with them on 'this material is corrosion resistant'. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 19 '21 at 14:58

2 Answers2

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In my opinion it should be written with a hyphen. The fact that it isn't does not necessarily change the meaning, just that someone has not seen fit to add a hyphen. But in a humanities department of a British university of which I am aware, such hyphenation is de rigeuer.

The NOUN-ADJECTIVE form is in everyday use; a light-sensitive cell, a man-eating tiger, an elephant-sized problem, a simple-minded idea etc.

WS2
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  • I don’t think air-tight is in common use offhand—the closed compound airtight is far more usual. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 30 '16 at 23:50
  • The short ones seem to be the first ones to become single words, e.g., colorblind and waterproof. But these can also be found hyphenated, and color blind as separate words. – Scott - Слава Україні Dec 31 '16 at 04:25
  • That’s an unusual construction.

    Would we not expect either ‘… resistant to corrosion’ or ‘… corrosion resistant?

    Personally I think ‘They made the material corrosion resistant’ wholly understandable but largely unjustifiable, with or without a hyphen.

    (Whether or not ‘air-tight’ is in common use, can we agree WS2’s examples show adjectival hyphenation preceding a noun; ‘… material corrosion resistant’ is more different than it is similar?

    (Hyphenated or not, doesn’t a suffixed adjective demand ‘resistive’ not ‘resistant’? Not a rhetorical question; I’d love an answer.)

     – Robbie Goodwin Jan 12 '17 at 21:13
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    Some guidebooks are more hyphen-positive than others. –  Aug 19 '21 at 20:45
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Rather than trot out rules-of-thumb (which certain institutions may of course make rigorous locally), one can try to find actual currency of usages. These Google ngrams

enter image description here

lend support to the claims that

  1. the hyphenated compound is the more common form in attributive uses (~ 5 : 2)
  2. the open form is the more common in predicative uses (~ 5 : 2)
  3. all variants are used in significant numbers, making claims that some form is incorrect seem hyperprescriptive. The hyphen not being required to disambiguate, I'd go with this (though I'd choose to use the more common variants).
Edwin Ashworth
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