Killer Queen. The usage of noun sequences of length two and more. Ambiguity of nouns phrases in English

English is not unambiguous, so there is no absolute rule. However, generally speaking the last noun is modified by the preceding nouns. "Sofa box container", has container as the last word, so it refers to a container, and the type of container is one for a sofa box.

When you hyphenate the meaning doesn't change much, so, from your example:

Queen-killer — a queen who is also a killer

Is not correct, a "queen-killer" is a person who kills queens. The hyphen just tightens the relationship.

The emphasis is the same with the genitive but the relationship is a little more ambiguous:

Queen's killer

Can mean a lot of things, the two most obvious candidates being a killer who works for the queen or a person who killed the queen. Nonetheless, the rule still applies, it is a killer, and the type of killer is "queen's".

So the bottom line is that usually the last word is the main word, the rest are modifiers.

For your example, database containing machines would be appropriate, since the main subject is the machine, and the rest say what type of machine. In this particular instance though the idiom would be just plain database machines, or database servers.

With two non-verbal nouns, the first is usually describing the second. The most important aspect of Killer Queen is the fact that she's a queen. (The killer part of the song is mostly about her looks and behavior, and shouldn't be taken literally - she's not the queen of killers, nor a member of the royal family.)

We're used to seeing adjectives there - Red Queen, for instance. So we automatically use the first word as a modifier of the second. Tiger Lily is another good example.

This is different when the noun has been derived from a verb. For instance, Blade Runner and Flag Bearer both have verbal nouns, where the subject is doing the verb to the first word.

You can make sense of three-word combinations with a verbal noun in very easily, for instance:

Flag bearer parade - a parade of people bearing flags
Motor car driver - a driver of motor cars

It's obvious that the verbal noun must apply to the word before.

However, when you have three noun words, usually each is a modifier for the one that follows afterwards. For instance:

Tiger lily bouquet - a bouquet of Tiger Lilies
Killer Queen music - the music to the song, "Killer Queen"

We already know that Tiger is a modifier of lily and killer modifies queen.

Because your example contains a verbal noun - container - we know it must apply to the word before; a box. It's a container of boxes. Particularly, the boxes it contains are sofa boxes, as opposed to chair boxes. I don't know what a sofa box is, but I can still parse it.

The other phrase you're looking for could be database container machine but probably you'd just say database server. Hope that helps.

Well, a "sofa box container" is a container intended to be used for holding sofa boxes, which are either boxes with sofas inside or boxes intended to be used for holding sofas.

A "sofa container box" would be a box intended to be used for holding sofa containers, which is a container of sofas or intended to contain sofas.

It's a little confusing since you have two containers.

How about a "butter knife factory", a factory which is used to make knives which are used with butter.

Basically, the first two words are linked first, then the third word is linked to them.

By the way, I think you maybe should look up the slang definitions for both "killer" and "queen", as I doubt that the person being talked about in the song is either a literal killer or a literal queen.

See also the Guardian style guide's entry on the hyphen for some advice in this general area.

In short drop a hyphen between two words if possible (wire-less becomes wireless) and use a hyphen to avoid ambiguity (black-cab driver or black cab-driver).

As to the question: " How do I understand combinations of length more than two?"

• If the writer has followed these rules it shouldn't be ambiguous.
• If the writer has written ambiguous text, use context to understand it.
• Failing that you'll have to try and find precedents.
• Failing even that, too bad, welcome to the wonderful confusing world (of badly written) English!