Words
When you think about what language is made of, most people (including you and me when we're not thinking too hard) say: "Words!"
We see words as the main pieces that build sentences, like bricks in a wall, but language is bigger and smaller than just words:
Smaller parts → words are made of tiny sounds (like the "c" and "a" and "t" sounds in "cat") and little meaning bits (like "un-" in "unhappy" meaning "not").
Bigger parts → words join together to make phrases ("the big dog"), clauses, full sentences, stories, books, and whole conversations (more on that later).
What counts as one "word" isn't the same in every language. For example, the English sentence "The naughty dog has escaped" has 5 words. But the same idea might be only 3 words in Russian, Turkish, or Swahili, or 7 words in Vietnamese. So "words" work differently depending on the language!
In English writing, words look easy to spot because we put spaces between them.
Example
"Old fat cats like to sleep in quiet sunny places" — that's clearly 10 words. Spaces help a lot!
But here's the tricky part…
Compound words
Lots of things we think of as one single idea don't always have spaces. For example, compound words.
Example
Foot + ball = football
Basket + ball = basketball
Cup + cake = cupcake
Tooth + brush = toothbrush
Pan + cake = pancake
Rain + bow = rainbow
Compound words are two (or more) words smashed together to make a new meaning. Examples: "lipstick" (one word), "well-known" (with a hyphen), or "ice cream" and "fairy tale" (with a space!). Even when there's a space, we still feel it's one thing.
Multi-word verbs (also called phrasal verbs)
This is a verb + extra little words that together mean something special.
Examples
"put off" = delay or postpone
"look up to" = admire/respect someone
They have spaces, but we treat them like one unit because you can't always guess the meaning just from the separate parts.
Important phrasal verbs
“Run out” – depleted
“Give up” – quit
“Work out” – exercise
“Run away” – escape
“Find out” – investigate
“Count on” – rely
“Burn out” – to feel exhausted
Idioms
These are fixed groups of words that mean something completely different from what the words literally say. Example: "pay through the nose" = pay way too much money (not really through your nose!). You can't change the words ("pay through the ears" doesn't work), so it's like one unbreakable chunk.
In summary
So... can we just say a word is "anything with spaces on both sides"? No, not really. There is no super-perfect definition everyone agrees on. But words usually have these helpful features:
They can stand alone and make sense by themselves (like shouting "Stop!" or "No!" or answering "Possibly"). (Tiny words like "the" or "by" hardly ever do this alone.)
You can swap one whole word for another whole word, but not a tiny piece of a word. Example: "She had a feeling" → "She had a premonition" works. But "She had a pre-" doesn't!
Words can move around in a sentence or have other words added near them: "Hypocrisy, I can’t stand." or "I really admire the poetry…" But you can't split inside a word: "Hypo- I can’t stand -crisy" is nonsense.
Most compound words and idioms stay "whole" and can't be split up. Multi-word verbs are a bit special — sometimes you can separate them ("put off the meeting" → "put the meeting off") — but we still think of them as one special unit with its own meaning.
In short
Spaces in writing are a helpful clue, but the real "word" idea comes from meaning, grammar, how our brain sees it, and how the language works overall. The edges between single words, groups of words, and bigger chunks can be a little fuzzy — and that's okay! It's part of what makes language interesting.
