You may think you already know this word, but don’t dash away! Hyphen is not just a run-of-the-mill grammar term. It also has a lesser-known application in architecture. The Dictionary of Architecture defines hyphen as follows:

Hyphen, noun

The connecting link between a main building and an outlying wing, such as is found in the South Atlantic states, in the Georgian mansions of the eighteenth century.

Word in Use: “Many more of these H-plan dwellings were comprised of eighteenth-century houses that outgrew their owners’ needs in the early nineteenth century and were expanded by adding a Federal house to the original Georgian house, then connecting them with a hyphen. Often the addition was log or frame rather than brick.”—K. Edward Lay, The Architecture of Jefferson County: Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, p. 57.

The above picture shows a hyphen at Whitehall manor house near Annapolis, Maryland.