Why the German language has so many great words
English has plenty of these kinds of compound words: &quot;shoebox&quot;, &quot;lapdog&quot;, &quot;underworld&quot;, &quot;housewife&quot;, &quot;footstool&quot;, &quot;raincoat&quot;, etc. Other compounds like &quot;thoughtexperiment&quot;, &quot;cocktaildress&quot; or &quot;middleschool&quot; are written with spaces, simply by convention. We could write them without spaces if we wanted to.<p>The author even says as much: &quot;Both German and English can create compound words out of most parts of speech, not just nouns, and English sometimes hyphenates them or even writes them as one word&quot;.<p>So it seems like the answer to the initial question (&quot;So what is it about the German language that allows for such constructions?&quot;) is &quot;arbitrary spelling rules&quot;.