1 a thing consisting of two or more separate things combined together
2 (chemistry) a substance formed by a chemical reaction of two or more elements in fixed amounts relative to each other:
Common salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine.
compareELEMENT, MIXTURE
3 (grammar) a noun, an adjective or a verb made of two or more words or parts of words, written as one or more words, or joined by a HYPHEN. Travel agent, dark-haired and bathroom are all compounds.
4 an area surrounded by a fence or wall in which a factory or other group of buildings stands:
a prison compound
adjective [notbeforenoun] (technical) formed of two or more parts:
a compound adjective, such as fair-skinned * A compound sentence contains two or more clauses. * the compound eye of a wasp
verb [VN]
1 [oftenpassive] (written) to make sth bad become even worse by causing further harm:
The problems were compounded by severe food shortages.
2 (be compounded of / from sth) (formal) to be formed from sth:
The DNA molecule is compounded from many smaller molecules.
3 [oftenpassive] (formal or technical) to mix sth together:
liquid soaps compounded with disinfectant
4 (finance) to pay or charge interest on an amount of money that includes any interest already earned or charged
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for compound is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is compound a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, compound is tagged as noun.
Does compound appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — compound appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.