As we prepare to enter the holiday season, many of us are reflecting on the things we are most thankful for. I am thankful for my relatively sane friends, my rambunctious cats, and, of course, hyphenated noun phrases. What, you may ask, is a hyphenated noun phrase? It is a phrase consisting of hyphenated words that create an adjective, followed by a noun. For example: third-party defendant. A hyphen combines the words “third” and “party” to form an adjective (“third-party”) that describes the noun, “defendant.”