word choice - "boilinghot" vs "boiling-hot" vs "boiling hot"



As the title indicates, these three forms of words/phrases can be quite confusing to me sometimes. When should they be written as one word ("boilinghot"), when should they be written in two words ("boiling hot"), and when should they be written as a hyphenated compound ("boiling-hot")? Does it make any difference which is used? There are other terms like this, such as blackboard/black board/black-board; swingman/swing man/swing-man etc.



Answer



In the first place, I've never seen boilinghot used.


As for the other two, there are different times for different uses. Only use the hyphen when it is a compound adjective



Let's speak of why the sea is boiling hot.


Let's speak of the boiling-hot sea.



@drm65 illustrates how Google NGrams may be misapplied. Searching for a hyphenated expression will cause it to flat-line unless you put a space between the hyphen and the words: e.g. "boiling hot,boiling - hot"


enter image description here


So while boiling hot appears to be used more often than boiling-hot, the latter's representation is not zero.


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