Within the last ten days two Anglo-South Americans have been in my office arranging for passages to New Zealand.–Times.
Anglo-South-Americans is the best that can be done. What is really wanted is Anglo-SouthAmericans, to show that South goes more closely with America. But it is too hopelessly contrary to usage at present.
The proceeds of the recent London-New York loan.–Times. (London and New-York loan.)
A good, generous, King Mark-like sort of man.–Times.
King-Mark-like, in default of KingMark-like. But the addition of -like to compound names should be avoided.
The Fugitive Slave-law in America before the rebellion.–H. Sidgwick. (Fugitive-Slave law)
The steam-cars will have 16-horse power engines.–Times.
Steam cars is better, by 3, and 1. And 16-horsepower engines. We can do this time what the capitals of American and Mark prevented in the previous compounds.
Entirely gratuitous hyphens.
One had a male partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque.–Meredith.
Gluttony is the least-generous of the vices.–Meredith.
A little china-box, bearing the motto 'Though lost to sight, to memory dear,' which Dorcas sent her as a remembrance.–Eliot.
This evidently means a box made of china. A box to hold china would have the hyphen properly, and there are many differentiations of this kind, of which black bird, as opposed to black-bird or blackbird, is the type.
Bertie took up a quantity of waste-papers, and thrust them down into the basket.–E. F. Benson.
This is probably formed by a mistaken step backwards from waste-paper basket, where the hyphen is correct, as explained in 3.
In phrases like wet and dry fly fishing, compounded of wet-fly fishing and dry-fly fishing, methods vary. For instance:
A low door, leading through a moss and ivy-covered wall.–Scott.
