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
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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:
But the awards were founded in 1974 by the most peculiar sort of hyphenate: a 6-foot-7 priest-producer named Father Ellwood “Bud” Kieser of the church’s Paulist Fathers society.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2023
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
Some people on Twitter shared a clip of King interviewing Julia Louis-Dreyfus where he asked her about having a "man’s name," seemingly mistaking the hyphenate for a middle name.
From Fox News ● Jan. 25, 2021
So it should be no surprise that I spent this week demanding everyone read a book about a 19th-century ichthyological taxonomist-eugenicist-assassin, a hyphenate that makes my head spin.
From New York Times ● May 12, 2020
Back then women didn’t keep their own names or hyphenate them.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
Actors who sing, singers who act: Hollywood’s entertainment-industrial complex is strewn with false starts from would-be hyphenates tempted by success in one field to try their luck in another.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2024
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
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
We’re a country of hyphenates, wherein man need not be defined only by statesman or politician, but equally by the various other degrees.
From Time ● Sep. 16, 2016
No hyphenates and few potato bugs in Longfield this year.
From The Old Blood by Palmer, Frederick
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
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 claim also defended Villanueva’s use of the inspector general’s full name, noting that his longer, hyphenated name is included on some public records websites as well as on his desk plaque.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 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
Instead of hyphenating or taking one or the other’s last name, the couple chose to create a new one of their own.
From New York Times ● Nov. 19, 2021
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
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 Whiting, Lilian
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.
