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dEhiN wrote:2) Over time as the word becomes more common, perhaps due to laziness (which is what I believe), the hyphen starts to get dropped.
linguoboy wrote:dEhiN wrote:2) Over time as the word becomes more common, perhaps due to laziness (which is what I believe), the hyphen starts to get dropped.
I hate the explanation "due to laziness", because it doesn't really explain anything, it only serves to cast aspersions.
I think it's more a matter of familiarity. Some of these compounds can look quite odd when written together, e.g. slipup. They can also be somewhat ambiguous according to the rules of English pronunciation. (Shouldn't that i be long before a single medial consonant?) The hyphen solves these problems. But as we get more and more used to seeing these compounds, we eventually reach a point where dropping the hyphen no longer impedes comprehension, and then we entre a period of alternation. The other day, for instance, I was about to write "set-up" when I realised "setup" looked just as natural to me, so I used that instead.
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