verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hyphenatesimple
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hyphenatessimple
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have hyphenatedperfect
-
has hyphenatedperfect
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am hyphenatingprogressive
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are hyphenatingprogressive
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is hyphenatingprogressive
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have been hyphenatingperfect progressive
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has been hyphenatingperfect progressive
Past
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hyphenatedsimple
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had hyphenatedperfect
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was hyphenatingprogressive
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were hyphenatingprogressive
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had been hyphenatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hyphenate
Explanation
When you hyphenate a word, you use a punctuation mark that resembles a dash to connect two words into one or separate a word's syllables. To write the word old-fashioned, you have to hyphenate it. When you write words like deep-fried and record-breaking, you hyphenate them, or add a hyphen to join their separate parts into one word. Another common reason to hyphenate words is when you reach the end of a line and need to split the word you're writing into two parts, continuing the second part on the next line. The rule here is to hyphenate between complete syllables.
Vocabulary lists containing hyphenate
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The most common solution is to hyphenate their last names or keep their own last names.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026
Hello Carolyn: Our son’s wife of several years chose to hyphenate our last name with her maiden name.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 4, 2022
If this latecomer is worried about distinguishing herself from you, she can hyphenate her existing surname with your ex-husband’s or keep it as it is.
From New York Times ● Mar. 17, 2020
I have never once heard it suggested that “Hot Rats” was any sort of milestone in that awkward hyphenate “jazz-rock,” probably because it just ain’t so.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2020
Back then women didn’t keep their own names or hyphenate them.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
With thousands of social media followers, the Nebraska-born model-actor-writer can add “influencer” to her multiple hyphenates, but she says today’s emphasis on “likes” has a downside.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 22, 2023
Writers who have dual positions — for example, writer-directors or writer-producers — are called hyphenates.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 2, 2023
It can be in an article, headline, ad, whatever, as long as both parts come from hyphenates — anything with a hyphen.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 3, 2022
So many of the cast are hyphenates — creators, writers, directors, showrunners.
From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2022
Of the three occurrences of the name "Newnes's Thin-Paper Classics", Bennett hyphenates only one; I have hyphenated all three.
From Literary Taste: How to Form It With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature by Arnold Bennett
Her husband kept his last name, while she hyphenated her last name with his.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026
Versions with and without the hyphen have been used in the past, but a 1960 Privy Council announcement used the hyphenated version, which will be used from now on.
From BBC ● Nov. 11, 2025
Such hyphenated Americans, he said, felt a “degree of accepted and reasonable pride,” and had succeeded in connecting “their heritage to their mother country” and also to “where they are now” in America.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2024
The cards had room for only a limited number of characters, and could not accommodate hyphenated or multi-word surnames like Bald Eagle Bear, so hundreds of names got scrambled.
From New York Times ● Jan. 9, 2023
With a hyphenated surname, she would no longer fit into the window of a business envelope.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
As Im notes, an increasing number of women do not change their names when they get married — about 20%, with another 10% hyphenating or otherwise incorporating their original name into a blended last name.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 1, 2023
We have a problem in the UK with people hyphenating their job roles.
From The Verge ● Sep. 3, 2021
You’re not even talking about hyphenating, or some other compound surname, or changing your child’s last name to yours—which would also be completely fine, by the way.
From Slate ● Jul. 7, 2021
Pope.L was raised by a single mother in and around Newark; his distinctive last name melds his father’s surname with her initial, L, for Lancaster — a feminist gesture before hyphenating became a norm.
From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2018
Her father, Edward Barrett Moulton, came into an inheritance of property by which he was required to add the name of Barrett again, hyphenating it, and was thus known as Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett.
From The Brownings Their Life and Art by Lilian Whiting
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
