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TIL the German word "backpfeifengesicht," which means "a face in need of a punch" or "a punchable face" (Visual example/definition also included)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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These are not compound words. These are noun phrases. Noun phrases in german have no spaces like they do in english. These aren't remotely like grandparent or airport.
Noun phrases are things like "of the red tree": Whole phrases that can be referred to by "this", "it", etc. Backpfeifengesicht ist very much a compound noun, "punchable face" is not, "schlagbares Gesicht" neither, both are noun phrases. "cuffearface" is a compound noun, no matter how many spaces and hyphens you add to it.
In English there is a clear difference between a compound word and a noun phrase. A compound word is a word that has two other words making up its parts which has a slightly, or completely different meaning from its parts. A noun phrase is a collection of words that make up an item, like 'I found the owner of the dog' 'the owner of the dog' is a noun phrase. In German it is, likely, expressed as a single unbroken string. It doesn't exactly mean that the Germans have a word for 'the owner of the dog' it's just the way they write noun phrases.