The purpose of this article is to clear up some confusion around the word woodturner. 

There is one school of thought that the word woodturner is not one but two words. That is, wood turner as opposed to woodturner. But which is correct?  After a little research it appears that both are correct or rather neither are incorrect. 

The word woodturner is a compound noun made of the two nouns wood and turner. At its origin, which is thought to be around the 1830's, the two nouns were used separately to name the occupation of  a person who turns wood.

There are three forms in which a compound noun may be used. These are as:

• One word i.e. Woodturner
• Two words hyphenated i.e. Wood-turner, or
• Two separate words i.e.Wood turner

​​As the rules around the writing of compound nouns are not clear technically all three forms are correct!

Having established this, it seems then that the same would be true for the word woodturing. It too could be written as woodturning, wood-turning or wood turning any one of which would be correct.

Same goes for the plurals:

• Woodturnings, wood-turnings, wood turnings
• Woodturners, wood-turners and wood turners

As the last point of interest, woodturning is defined as ' the art or process of fashioning wooden pieces or blocks into various forms and shapes by means of a lathe'.

The first known use of the word woodturning was in 1849. This is interesting as woodturning is known to have been around since the 1300 BC. I guess it must have been called something else then, food for thought for another article. 

Sources:

• Dictionary.com
• Edufind
• Merriam-webster.com
• Wikipedia