One word or two words?

January 17th, 2009 at 07:00am Barry Wood

Verbs often pair up with prepositions to form idiomatic phrases. When they’ve been around long enough, they often merge to become adjectives and nouns.

For example, the verb phrase “kick off” is two words: “Organizers will kick off the campaign Friday.”

The adjective and noun forms are one word: “The kickoff luncheon has been postponed.” “He ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown.”

They don’t always follow this evolutionary path, but it’s the most common one. Other “off” combos that conform to this pattern include “castoff,” “cutoff,” “layoff,” “liftoff” and “takeoff.”

As always, the best policy is to look it up. But if you like to gamble, bet on two words for a verb-preposition pair and one word for the adjective or noun. 

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