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Which is correct: high society networking, or, high-society networking?

Chicago Manual of Style gives a middle-class neighborhood/the neighborhood is middle class as an example of a generic rule that adjective + noun compounds should be hyphenated if modifying another noun. However, many common terms like "real estate agent" or "criminal justice major" look very weird to me when hyphenated as "real-estate agent" and "criminal-justice major," and Ngrams seems to agree.

Is there anything going on other than "the commonest forms don't use hyphens"?

Feryll
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  • The hyphen might make the difference between "networking of high society" or "high networking of society" – DustInCompetent Jan 05 '22 at 08:50
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    See this question, although if you're asking specifically about following the Chicago Manual of Style rather than general English usage, can you make that clear. (Not everyone agrees with CMoS but if it's your job/assignment to follow it, then you must.) https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/299652/hyphenation-of-a-compound-modifier-formed-of-an-adjective-and-a-noun – Stuart F Jan 05 '22 at 09:59
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    Does this answer your question? Is it correct to hyphenate with compound premodifiers? If so, where is the hyphen placed? Essentially, the simple rule we'd all love to discover doesn't exist. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 05 '22 at 11:55
  • There is no real answer to this question. Hyphenation is a transitional stage between two separate words that are a common collocation and a single word that carries a specific meaning. Old English was an agglutinative language and words were freely compounded but Modern English – probably because of Norman French influence - tends towards being synthetic language and there is a reluctance to combine words. This reluctance causes confusion: some adopt the hyphen, some reject it, some vacillate, and the occasional brave soul combines. – Greybeard Jan 05 '22 at 12:06
  • I'd treat "high-society" as a compound adjective in your example by virtue of the fact that the component parts can't enter separately into relations of coordination and modification. For example, we can hardly say "high and low society" nor "high rich society" – BillJ Jan 05 '22 at 15:08
  • Thanks all. I searched for a little on existing threads before posting my own, but didn't find those ones specifically, which appear to be duplicates. I think I have all the info I need now. – Feryll Jan 05 '22 at 17:41

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