Stress in compound words in English

The compound words are made by joining two or three words. For example: milk-pot, tea-set, blackboard, innkeeper, lighthouse, armchair etc, are compound words. The well established compound words are written as one-word; those which are not so well established are hyphenated and the rest are written as separate words.

Now look at the compound words given in the following two columns:

Crossroads               well-known

Darkroom                good-looking

Coalmine                 overworked

Greenhouse            light-hearted

Windscreen             type-hearted

The compound words in column one are nouns. Those in column two are adjectives (first four) and verbs (last four). The components of compound words are stressed as under:

‘Cross, roads              ,well-‘kknown

Dark, room                ,good’looking              

When the two components of a compound word are adjective and noun we have to be very careful in making the stress. If the compound word is a noun the primary stress come on the first component and the secondary stress come on the second component. Same is the case with compound words that are verbs. But when the compound word is an adjective, the primary stress comes on the second component and secondary stress on the first component.

The word Whitehouse in the same of the noun has primary stress on the first consonant W and the

Secondary stress on h. A white in which the word white acts as an adjective gives primary stress on the consonant h.

It may be noted that most of the two syllable words, unless they contain a strong prefix or are compound words, take only one stress.

If should also be noted that the compound words with self or selves always take stress on the second component like:

Him’self, her’self, our’self, them’selves, etc