Hydrogen in Portuguese

The twenty-second entry is o funcionamento em seguimento de carga, and English compresses six words into two: « load-following operation ». The compression is worth taking apart, because it is one of the most productive patterns the language has and it runs backwards to anyone thinking in Portuguese. Take a verb, take the noun that is its object, and set the object in front: the plant follows the load, so the plant is « load-following ». The same mould gives « load-bearing » for a wall that carries a load, « time-consuming » for work that eats time, « labour-saving » for a machine, « record-breaking » for a season, « thirst-quenching » for a drink. Three habits keep it tidy. The noun in front stays singular however plural the sense, so a wall is « load-bearing » and never « loads-bearing ». The pair is hyphenated in front of the noun it describes and may lose the hyphen behind it, as in « the plant is load following ». And the whole thing is an adjective, so English still needs a noun after it — here « operation », elsewhere « mode » or « plant ».