Vocabulary 10 - Compound Words Related to Space
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for MANKIND."
Do you recall these famous words spoken by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, in July 1969? You may be surprised to know that MANKIND is a compound word formed from two words MAN and KIND. MAN is a noun and KIND is an adjective and the two together form the word MANKIND, which is a noun meaning 'the collective group of all human beings'.
Compound words are formed by combining any of the types of words representing the different parts of speech. They may or may not have meanings similar to those of the words used. The same compound word also may have several different meanings and belong to different parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections).
Compound words are simply formed by placing the two words side by side without any alterations. The order is important and must be maintained. For instance MANKIND is a word but KINDMAN is not.
Over a period of time compound words begin to acquire the status of single words and to be assimilated into the English vocabulary. Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon opened up a plethora of activities connected with outer space, the stars, moon, sun and other astronomical bodies and phenomena. The exploits in space also paved the way for many words to be coined in order to describe events connected with the subject. Many new words connected to space have been formed as compound words by combining two other words. In the quiz that follows you will see some examples and by taking the quiz you can test your knowledge of such words.