verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
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
This Week In Culture: November 16–22, 2019
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The Seventh Wish
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Not Like Other Girls
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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
Mr. McLaughlin, smiled, ready to add another hyphenate to his dancer-singer-actor-dunker résumé.
From New York Times ● Jun. 3, 2022
Do you have a favorite hyphenate in the multi-hyphenate?
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2022
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
But the majority consist of dominant mixtures, hyphenates, groups which are the species and varieties of the greater classes.
From The Glands Regulating Personality by Louis Berman M.D.
Throughout the book, Mr. Pence deploys that hyphenated label—“the Trump-Pence administration”—to describe Mr. Trump’s first term in office.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 1, 2026
An Orange County election board staff member told her they suspected that process initially failed because her last name is now hyphenated.
From Salon ● Feb. 1, 2025
To be an actor and a full-time parent and a full-time all those hyphenated titles — wife and daughter and community provider — is like serving in the military, I’ll tell you that.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2023
On Friday, Mr. Pence delivered an energetic and well-received speech that ticked through the accomplishments of what he called the “Trump-Pence” administration, mentioning Mr. Trump’s name only once and in that hyphenated context.
From New York Times ● Nov. 20, 2022
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
Plus, unless the parents change to a hyphenated name too, it means three different names are in play in the same family, as they were in ours once she started hyphenating.
From Slate ● Jan. 12, 2020
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
It didn't take them long to decide hyphenating all the names together alphabetically was much too unwieldy to work.
From The Alembic Plot A Terran Empire novel by Ann Wilson
Definitions 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.
