There is a sentence in an article which says : “Workers are hard-pressed to finish work during a tight off-service window”. Can anyone explain my questions :
1. does *tight off-service* mean *tight schedule* 2. why there is a - between *hard-pressed* and *off-service*.Any comments are welcomed. Thanks
Answer
An “off-service window” sounds similar to a “maintenance window” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_window That is, a scheduled time when the machine or system is not available for service. “Window” is used in sense 5. in https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/window i.e. a period of time.
English is pretty flexible when it comes to spelling compound nouns and adjectives: sometimes they are spelled as two words; sometimes they are hyphenated; and sometimes they are run together. There will often be variants in use at the same time. For example, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hard-pressed also gives “hard pressed” as a variant form.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : tonytran , Answer Author : la_mochila