Word.ws English Dictionary

hyphenates

UK/ˈhʌɪf(ə)neɪts/

hyphenates is the plural of hyphenate.

hyphenates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hyphenate.

Meaning of hyphenate

Noun

hyphenate (plural hyphenates)

  1. A person or object with multiple duties, abilities or characteristics, such as "writer-director", "actor-model", or "singer-songwriter".
  2. A person whose ethnicity is a multi-word hyphenated term, such as "African-American".
    • We seem to have settled on African-American, and at first glance it certainly does seem logical. […] Not to mention what happens when hyphenates marry other hyphenates and have baby hyphenates.2006, Nick Adams, Making Friends With Black People, page 15

See all 4 meanings of hyphenate

Questions about hyphenates

What is hyphenates the plural of?
Hyphenates is the plural of hyphenate.
How do you pronounce hyphenates?
Hyphenates is pronounced /ˈhʌɪf(ə)neɪts/ (UK).

Words near hyphenates in the dictionary

  1. hyphenatable
  2. hyphenate
  3. hyphenated
  4. hyphenated American
  5. hyphenated Americans
  6. hyphenates
  7. hyphenating
  8. hyphenation
  9. hyphenations
  10. hyphenator
  11. hyphenators

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hyphenates (page history and authors); hyphenate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hyphenates.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hyphenates. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.