Compound Nouns

Question

While reading a news article last night, I ran across the phrase pesos pesados which I looked up and found to mean "persona de gran relieve e influencia en un determinado ámbito o actividad"

This got me thinking about compound nouns. In English, compound nouns are usually composed of two words (noun/noun, noun/adjective, etc) that have a meaning that is different than the two separate words. Compound nouns can be hyphenated, one word or two separate words:

1). Fish tank [Two separate words]

2). Dining-table [hyphenated]

3). Motorcycle [one word made up of motor + cycle]

My question is this. Does the concept of compound nouns exist in Spanish, and if it does, would this (pesos pesados) be and example of one?

Answer 1

El concepto existe aunque pesos pesados no corresponde a un sustantivo compuesto.

Sustantivo compuesto (in Spanish): es el que está formado por más de una palabra.

Ejemplos:

sacapunta, casaquinta, radiotelégrafo, televisión, limpiavidrios, plumafuente, telégrafo, parabrisas, radioaficionado, etc.

Please, look at the following page: Noun Classification

• Muchas gracias por el enlace. Me parece muy útil. Gracias - Izanoni1 Oct 23, 2009
• You are welcome. - Carlos-F Oct 23, 2009

Answer 2

I think pesos pesados would be one. Just because together it would mean literally "heavy cents" and clearly it does not literally mean heavy cents (based on what u found as its definition). The majority of words we'd consider compound words in English would all be one word in Spanish or a combo of like 3 words that includes "de". For example, "poleron" (sweatshirt), "cuaderno" (notebook) o "polera" (tanktop). But "sweatpants" is "pantalones de buzo". All of these translations are in Chilean spanish. Every Latin American country's Spanish is different though. I hope this helps.

• Thank you dlovely - Izanoni1 Oct 23, 2009

Answer 3

There are compound words in Spanish. They can be make up of Noun + Noun, Verb + Noun or Noun + adjective.

• hombre rana (the Noun + noun examples I've seen are separated by a space, but have a single meaning, like frogman).
• lavaplatos
• pelirojo
• sacapuntas
• sinverguenza
• parabrisas
• tocadiscos

• Thank you Mark - Izanoni1 Oct 23, 2009

Answer 4

Hi dlovely,

Thanks for weighing in. I think that in the sense that this was used that perhaps "pesos pesados" would be more along the lines of "heavyweights," but I could be wrong on this.