Compound adjectives in English: rules for creating them

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Normally, when we create compound adjectives in English, the words are joined by hyphens. This helps to avoid possible ambiguities arising from using multiple words as adjectives. Look at these examples:

Jealousy is a green-eyed monster : It is not clear whether we are talking lebanon phone number list a green-eyed monster or a green monster with eyes. It can be easily deduced from context in this case, but we can easily avoid ambiguity with a hyphen.
Jealousy is a green-eyed monster : In this example, there is no possible ambiguity.
They are blue collar workers : there is ambiguity between whether we are talking about blue or blue-collar workers.
They are blue-collar workers : this expression refers to those workers who are dedicated to performing manual work. Historically it was used to refer to workers in factories or workshops.


This hyphen is not added when we have an adverb that modifies an adjective, since in this case it is not a compound word:

He is terribly moody . — He has a very bad temper.
That is an amazingly good idea.
A hyphen is also not used if, instead of a compound adjective, we are using several adjectives linked together:

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf ?
I saw the tall Russian girl yesterday . —Yesterday I saw the tall Russian girl.