English Language & Usage Asked by K Grey on April 8, 2021
I came across the sentence "He is Fibonacci spiral attractive," and my first thought was that "Fibonacci spiral" should be hyphenated. I consulted my sister, and she thought it should be "Fibonacci spiral-attractive." Now I’m considering that I’m wrong about it needing any hyphen at all.
I’ve been scouring the internet for answers, but I don’t really know the technical terms, so I haven’t been very successful.
There is a probable duplicate, but I've never seen this (doubtless nonce) compound secondary-modifier (adjective modifier, traditionally adverb) before.
Fibonacci∞spiral∞attractive.
Where if anywhere does one hyphenate?
Looking for similar strings that are idiomatic, we find
The latter is probably so idiomatic that a hyphen is felt to be unnecessary clutter. Practice may also vary with position of modifier (prenominal or predicative).
With the nonce candidate here, there is obviously a possibility of confusion, one factor being the unusual reference (a Fibonacci spiral). (Actually, the golden spiral looks more perfect ... I am assuming that the meaning here is supposed to be very, very rather than rugged, angular). To show that this is a cohesive unit (rather than spiral attractive), the gluing effect of a hyphen is best employed. Also, scare-italics for a nonce usage. And a clue to the intended meaning.
He's Fibonacci-spiral attractive.
Answered by Edwin Ashworth on April 8, 2021
Get help from others!
Recent Questions
Recent Answers
© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP