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Word for Wednesday: Hyphen

For the month of March, we are theming our Word for Wednesday blog posts around types of punctuation. So far we have looked at the words apostrophe, parenthesis, and comma. This week’s word is hyphen.   A hyphen is a short dash which is used to link words together. There are three main situations in which hyphens are used: in compound words, when adding a prefix to another word, and to denote word breaks. A compound word is a word that is made up of two or more other words. Hyphens are often used in compound words either to show that when the included words are together they have a combined meaning, or to show the relationship between ...

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Word for Wednesday: Saxophone

Today marks the birthday of an important figure in music history, best known for the invention of the Saxophone. Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax was born this day in 1814. To commemorate his contributions to music, 6th of November is celebrated annually as National Saxophone Day. The word Saxophone is a compound of ‘Sax’ (after Adolphe) and ‘Phone’. The name Sax spans from the Germanic Sachs literally meaning ‘Saxon’ or ‘one from Saxony’. The suffix ‘Phone’ is derived from the Greek ‘Phonos’ meaning ‘sounding’ or ‘voice’. Not to be confused with another Greek definition for ‘Phono...

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