You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

A compound word consists of two words that are put together to express one idea.

Like the word House Boat is made up of two words house and boat. Same with

steamboat and both of these specify a particular kind of boat. But there are a few

compound words in English that work differently.

A scarecrow, for example, isn't a type of crow, and a pickpocket isn't a type of pocket.

And words like scarecrow and pickpocket belong to a small category of compounds that name people

and things by describing what they do.

And the interesting thing is that centuries ago there was a real fashion for forming words like this and it was a whole lot of fun like a

quake breach can you guess what a quake breach is somebody who's shaking in their boots yes

yes yes they're in their breaches yeah they, they're a coward, or a saddle goose.

What about a saddle goes?

Somebody who's a bad horse rider?

Well, somebody who's a fool who's silly enough

to try to saddle a goose, which if you've had experience with geese, it's not so easy.

And Brianne Hughes is a linguist who spent years studying this category of words.

Technically, they're called a gente

and instrumental exocentric verb noun compounds. But she calls them cutthroat

compounds because cutthroat is another example of that. It's not a type of throat.

And she's collected more than 1,200 of these, like for example a scrape gut.

...