WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Grammar Minute: Cats & Compound Nouns

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

 If Hadrian and Mittens are sitting in front of the fire, could it be that Hadrian or Mittens ... are going to get up and eat dinner? Find out on today's episode of Grammar Minute!

Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language 60 seconds at a time. I'm Lauren Smith, and today we're going to talk about compound nouns and conjunctions. For reference, a compound noun is when you have two nouns at the beginning of a sentence. For example, mittens and Hadrian, my cats, are in front of the fireplace. A conjunction is a connective word, such as and, but, or... What if you want to say that one or the other of my cats is in front of the fireplace, but not both of them? You might be tempted to say, Hadrian or Mittens are in front of the fireplace. But that doesn't sound right, and it's not.

Because Mittens is the noun closest to the verb, and the compound nouns are separated by or instead of and, the verb must agree with the singular noun, mittens, not the compound noun, Hadrian and mittens. This is true of all compound nouns separated by or and nor, but not and. That's your Grammar Minute on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.