"Phrasal Nouns" Is a "phrasal noun" in English that bizarre thing where you place nouns side-by-side and together that only mean one thing? I think that's what it's called, because I learned it here, I'm pretty sure. It strikes me as really strange. Like  "automobile repair shop." Why can't we just combine the words and write "automobilerepairshop"  like they do in German? Would English speakers all just have heart attacks or something seeing a word like that, or not be able to figure it out? It's an oddity of English. I've noticed some of these words transition from two to one, like "court house" used to be that, now it's "courthouse." And then some words have to be connected with a dash so English speakers don't get dizzy or something and then they later get accepted as one word. All I can figure is it has something to do with the lack of grammatical gender in English. You obviously couldn't have three words side-by-side, each with a different gender, and then try to say all together they mean only one thing, because what gender would the one thing have? See, it doesn't make any sense. Weird. Is there any history to any of this?