Stress on first word:CODE review · LOAD balancer (stress distinguishes compound nouns from noun phrases)
Hyphen as modifier: a load-balanced cluster · a well-tested module
Know your expansions: CI/CD · API · ORM · TDD · SLA · SLO · IaC · SDK
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Which is the correct compound noun for a server that balances load across multiple instances?
"Load balancer" — two words, no hyphen — is the standard industry term. Compound noun stress rules: in a compound noun, the first word is stressed (LOAD balancer, not load BALancer). This stress pattern distinguishes compound nouns from noun phrases: a "LOAD balancer" (one thing) vs. "a heavy MACHINE" (adjective + noun). Most IT compound nouns are written as two words: version control, code review, test runner, error message. Some are hyphenated when used as modifiers: "a load-balanced cluster".
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Identify the correct IT compound noun in this sentence: "Please check the _____ before deploying to avoid merge conflicts."
"Pull request" — the standard term for a request to merge code changes into a branch. The word order in compound nouns is: modifier first, head noun last (pull modifies request — "a request to pull/merge code"). Common IT compound nouns with this structure: push notification, merge conflict, code review, bug report, test suite, stack trace, rollback plan. Reversed order ("request pull") is never correct in English compound nouns.
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Build the correct compound noun for a document that describes how a system behaves. Choose the right combination.
"Technical specification" (or tech spec) — adjective + noun. Notice the difference between: a technical specification (tech spec), a functional specification (func spec), a design specification. Two-word compound nouns can be: noun+noun (code review), adjective+noun (technical specification), or verb+noun (pull request). In everyday IT usage, many compound terms are shortened: tech spec, dev ops, prod env. Knowing when to abbreviate shows fluency.
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Expand the abbreviation into its full noun phrase: "The team uses a CI/CD pipeline to automate releases."
"Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (or Continuous Delivery) pipeline." — CI/CD is one of the most common IT abbreviations. The distinction: CI = automatically testing and integrating code changes; CD = either automatically delivering to a staging environment (Continuous Delivery) or automatically deploying to production (Continuous Deployment). In interviews and documentation, knowing the full expansion — and the difference between Delivery and Deployment — signals a deeper understanding than just knowing the acronym.
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Which compound noun correctly describes a server that stores files and serves them to clients on request?
"File server" — simple two-word compound: modifier (file) + head noun (server). This is the standard pattern for naming IT components by their function: web server, mail server, proxy server, DNS server, database server, game server. The modifier tells you what the server handles. "Server of files" is grammatically possible but not used in IT. "File serving server" is redundant — the word "server" already implies serving. Learning the standard form of IT compound nouns is part of professional fluency.