A WORD ABOUT COMPOUND NOUNS

A compound noun (such as football or ice cream) becomes a plural when you add an 's' at the end of the most important word of the compound, also called the head of the compound. (The other part just describes or gives more detail about the actual "head" word).

Examples:

compounds	head	plural
ice cream	cream	ice creams
car park	park	car parks
mother-in-law	mother	mothers-in-law	your wife's / husband's mother

Compound nouns with -ful

Compound nouns with '-ful'	Plural is either...
handful	handsful	handfuls
mouthful	mouthsful	mouthfuls
spoonful	spoonsful	spoonfuls
bucketful	bucketsful	bucketfuls
cupful	cupsful	cupfuls
truckful	trucksful	truckfuls

Compound nouns ending in a preposition

When the compound is formed with a noun and a preposition, (e.g. passer-by = a person who passes you by in the street), the plural is formed by adding an 's' to the noun -- NOT AT THE END.

Compound Noun	Plural
passer-by	passers-by
hanger-on	hangers-on

But notice the word grown-up: it's plural is grown-ups, with 's' at the end. This is because "grown" is not a noun, it's a verb (grow - grew - grown). That's why the 's' is at the end.

With this in mind, do this exercise:

Compound nouns