Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use hyphen in a sentence

21 example sentences · noun, verb, conjunction

Hyphen means the symbol "‐", typically used to join two or more words to form a compound term, or to indicate that a word has been split at the end of a line. Example: “As the proud owner of my very own hyphen in a lovingly crafted surname, I have an especial soft spot for this most confusing of punctuation marks.”

Examples of hyphen by meaning

nounThe symbol "‐", typically used to join two or more words to form a compound term, or to indicate that a word has been...

  • As the proud owner of my very own hyphen in a lovingly crafted surname, I have an especial soft spot for this most confusing of punctuation marks.2021, Claire Cock-Starkey, Hyphens & Hashtags, Bodleian Library, page 56

nounSomething which links two things of greater significance than itself.

  • Cunliffe and Karunanayake (2013) developed Fine's notion to introduce potential hyphen spaces that are deeply implicated and reciprocally influential in relationships between researchers and the researched.2019 June 20, Noof Aldaheri, Gustavo Guzman, and Heather Stewart, “Tales of the Unknown and Entanglement”, in Prof. Anthony Stacey, editor...

nounAn enclosed walkway or passage that connects two buildings.

  • The hyphens were added, joining the structures into one building, which now measures just over two hundred feet long.1997, Peter Beney, The Majesty of Colonial Williamsburg, page 156
  • Construction details for the hyphens, or "connecting wings" as they were called by the contractors, were included in the contractors' specifications, as follows:2010, Mary L. Kwas, A Pictorial History of Arkansas's Old State House
  • Those were the “hyphens,” the passageways that connected the wings of the mansion to its center.2012, James M Cain, The Cocktail Waitress

nounSomeone who belongs to a marginalized subgroup, and can therefore described by a hyphenated term, such as...

  • Tab has been kept on quite a number of members who rapturously applauded when that part of the message in which the hyphens were attacked was read by the President.1916, The American Monthly - Volume 3, page 221
  • A leading Republican paper also had, on the eve of the convention, focused attention on this issue by remarking that Hughes was “designated by the Hyphens as their agent to punish Mr.2013, Kevin O’Keefe, A Thousand Deadlines

conjunctionUsed to emphasize the coordinating function usually indicated by the punctuation "-".

  • You are sitting at the wrong table, if I may be so bold, among the misguided who believe in the mass murder of mentalities, otherwise known as the liberal arts hyphen vocational training hyphen education.1945, Robert Gessner, Youth is the time
  • An actor hyphen director hyphen writer.1950, Cleveland Amory, Home town
  • He described himself as a poet-composer and actually said the word hyphen when he did so: "I'm a poet hyphen composer.1983, Linda Crawford, Vanishing acts

More sentences with hyphen

  • In an open compound, the component words are separate, with no hyphen (well fed; wagon train).2008, Oxford American Large Print Dictionaryhttps://books.google.com/books?id=V585_u2mRG0C&pg=PA1398&dq=%22open+compound%22. From the entry open compound
  • Hyphen always arrives with a postal baquote added to the certified Willis-picked ones.1965 February, Tom Perry, “Postscripts”, in Hyphen, number 36, archived from the original on 17 Mar 2013, page 15. From the entry baquote
  • It’s just a word which precedes a hyphen, after which you can use any other word you want.2012, Bob Spencer, “The Body Farm”, in Sanity and Solitude: Cogent Ramblings of a Lone Aesthetic, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 136. From the entry pedantics
  • A hyphen (-) is generally used to indicate the boundary between the components of ordinary and reduplicative compounds in derivational morphology.2004, Jean Robert Opgenort, A Grammar of Wambule. From the entry reduplicative
  • The hyphen is important here as it highlights the ongoing, the relational and fundamentally the contested nature of re-presentation.2004, Caroline Howarth, “Re-presentation and resistance in the context of school exclusion: reasons to be critical”, in Journal of…. From the entry re-presentation
  • Hyphens are popular, as are check marks and arrows.1996, Marcia Layton, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Terrific Business Writing, page 110. From the entry bullet point
  • Syllabisation shown by use of hyphens; accented syllables in italics.1951, Edward Hugh Tinley, A Guide to the Nomenclature Used in Organic Chemistry, page 15. From the entry syllabisation
  • Why then do I feel all stabby when I get a message that ends with three short marks: a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis?2009 November 30, Mary Elizabeth Williams, “Death to Smiley”, in Salon. From the entry stabby
  • The HTML view and JavaScript files are named using kebab-case, for example, book-list.html, where the name is made up of lower-case words separated by a hyphen.2018, Sean Hunter, Aurelia in Action, Manning Publications, →ISBN. From the entry kebab-case
  • One of the ways to work the hyphens is through curricula that engage students in writing and inquiry using both students' multidialectal repertoires and the schools' literacies.2011, Leila Christenbury, Randy Bomer, Peter Smagorinsky, Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research, page 338. From the entry work the hyphens
  • Thus, they simultaneously worked the hyphens of their mutual existences, forming at times a balanced equation, at other times highlighting the knowledge and strengths of one particular author.2000, Judith Glazer-Raymo, Estela Mara Bensimon, Barbara K. Townsend, Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, page 268. From the entry work the hyphens

Meaning of hyphen

  1. noun The symbol "‐", typically used to join two or more words to form a compound term, or to indicate that a word has been split at the end of a line.
  2. noun Something which links two things of greater significance than itself.
  3. noun An enclosed walkway or passage that connects two buildings.

Full definition of hyphen

Questions about hyphen in a sentence

How do you use hyphen in a sentence?
Hyphen is used as a noun, verb and conjunction. For example: “As the proud owner of my very own hyphen in a lovingly crafted surname, I have an especial soft spot for this most confusing of punctuation marks.”
What is a short sentence with hyphen?
“An actor hyphen director hyphen writer.”
What does hyphen mean?
Hyphen means the symbol "‐", typically used to join two or more words to form a compound term, or to indicate that a word has been split at the end of a line.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hyphen (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use hyphen in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/hyphen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.