What are some other kennings in any of the major dialects of Modern Standard English? Here are a few examples in use in American English that I offer for starters:
- rug-rat
- rice-rocket
- eye-candy
- eye-opener
- tongue-lashing
- jail-bait
- mind-share
- belly-buster
- tear-jerker
- coin-toss
- nail-biter (suspenseful movie)
- spine-tingler (eerie/scary movie)
- night-owl
- grease-monkey
- disk-jockey
- code-warrior
- bit-cruncher
- stud-muffin
- saw-bones
- moon-shine
- block-buster (a very popular movie)
This is a form of single-word request. I'm not looking for words with a particular meaning but a compound-noun with a particular structure.
A kenning is a compound consisting of two nouns (though sometimes adjective + noun) whose semantic relationship yields, indirectly, a nominal that is not a synonym for either of them, though one of them might be a metonym for part of the idea.
Rice-rocket, for example, is a name for 'fast Japanese motorcycle' (though I've heard it used of souped-up Japanese subcompact cars too). Rice is a metonym for Japan. Rocket yields fast-vehicle by synechdoche.
These are conversational everyday words, not restricted to poetical argot.
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