[Feliz]

Originally Posted by irmamar

Not all compound nouns are masculine nouns, they can be feminine. Usually, compound nouns with a verb in them are masculine ("el abrelatas", "el girasol", "el quitamanchas", etc.), but there are feminine ones, too: "la aguzanieves", "la cortapisa", etc.

There is a rule not respected (so, I'm not sure that it is a rule ) that the last noun gives the gender to the compound noun, so "el mediodía" would be affected by the masculine noun of "día" (el día). So, we have the following feminine nouns: "aguamarina", "avemaría", "telaraña", "aguanieve", "bocamanga", etc.

However, there are much more masculine compound nouns than feminine ones.

I am learning to trust my instincts and Spanish Grammar at the same time! When I came across: "All compound nouns require a masculine definite or indefinite article." in a lesson plan recently, I doubted the "all" part--because of my age and experience, probably. I only dared to use that rule in this thread because I had not come across any compound nouns that required feminine articles yet. What you say seems true about there being more masculine compound nouns than feminine ones--now that I know they even exist. I will study more closely what you have written and I thank you for including examples of compound nouns that require feminine articles. Gracias por la corrección.