Nice string of three "X house" compounds that are quite different from what one usually thinks of when hearing the word "house":
"They [restaurants]'ve set up in vacant filling stations, lumber mills, warehouses, halfway houses, firehouses, churches, chop shops, storefronts, studios, scrapyards, and school buses; [...]" (Estleman, Cutthroat dogs, Chapter 13)
In fact, if one applies whether any constitutent appears in the definition as a test of #semanticTransparency, Wikipedia's definition of "halfway house" renders it completely semantically opaque:
"A halfway house is a type of prison or institute intended to teach (or reteach) the necessary skills for people to re-integrate into society and better support and care for themselves. " The entry also explains the motivation behind the term:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfway_house
#compoundWatch #English

When looking for the scope and aims of the journal "The Mental Lexicon" (I am working on a review :)), I noticed a cross next to Gary Libben's name: apparently he passed on last year,.
He was always a most friendly, fun, and enthusiastic person whenever I met him at conferences, and of course he was a very major lover of compounds and everything about them.
Here is a link to an obituary:
https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2025/05/brock-mourns-the-passing-of-applied-linguistics-prof/
#compoundWatch #GaryLibben

Wollte eigentlich nur Nachschauen was "Preisschnapsen" ist (= Schnapsen um Preise, wobei Schnapsen ein Kartenspiel ist). Kam darüber noch zur "Kathederblüte" (= Stilblüte von einer Lehrperson), und auch diesem schönen, Johann Georg August Galletti zugeschriebenen Ausspruch:
"Ihr denkt wohl, Geschichte ist so leicht als Schnarps? Ach, Geschichte kann man in einer Stunde lernen, aber an Schnarps muß man mehrere Jahre studiren."
#compoundWatch
Mehr hier: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnapsen

Learned a most excellent #English birdname today: "Goldeneye". As the picture illustrates, a well-motivated metonymic name for a duck. You ask, is the #German name not perhaps also a most excellent name. I would say: it is ok, "Schellente" Schelle/schellen 'bell/to ring'' + ente 'duck'. Apparently motivated by the characteristic sounds that they make when flying (unfortunately I have not heard them flying :().
#compoundWatch #semanticTransparency
Image credits: Hyla meridionalis, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Walking to the train station after visiting an old friend in Hamburg/Altona, I stumbled across a sign containing this weirdly configured German compound: "Dampfmarzipanfabrik" steam + marzipan + factory. Intuitively, my reading was: factory for steam marzipan. AFAIK, no such thing as steam marzipan exists, and it does indeed refer to a steam-powered factory for marzipan. Web-searching reveals different spellings (e.g. Dampf-Marzipanfabrik), but for me, "Marzipandampffabrik" would have been the configuration of choice (but the sequence "mpff" looks ugly)
#compoundWatch

#compoundWatch: useful #MandarinChinese compound:
病友 bing4you3 illness + friend: 'friend made while being in a hospital', and also just 'wardmate'

Painfull #compoundWatch moment: a dead compound in the OED. Why did "eyethirl" not make it? I do not know, eye + hole for "window" seem OK do me. "Window" itself according to the OED a borrowing from early Scandinavian, luckily enough also a compound, from the "early Scandinavian cognate of" (OED) wind and eye.

Always a highlight with plant names: looking up the translation equivalent and realizing that this is also not helpful. Anyways, #English "Chinese parasol tree" has a relatively straightforward #German equivalent "Chinesischer Sonnenschirmbaum". Of interest (#compoundWatch :)): they share the motivation for the name, so apparently a tree somehow comparable in function to a parasol. The #Chinese name does not have this component, it is just 梧桐, wútóng, with both characters sharing the left component indicating it is likely a plant. So what is this tree like? Wikipedia to the rescue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmiana_simplex

#compoundWatch: solid compound humour
https://mstdn.social/@grickle/115333723408106770

Unerwarteter #compoundWatch Moment: "Lockspitzel" im Langenscheidt Schulwörterbuch #Französisch (2000) für "agent provocateur". Immerhin, das Wort gibt es wohl wirklich, und im DWDS dazu noch den sehr schönen Belegsatz "Es ist hier nötig, die Tatsachen sehr genau zu fixieren, Herr John engagiert einen Lockspitzel namens Kraus. [Die Zeit, 18.01.1954, Nr. 03] "