[tialaramex]

Hospital bills feels like a pretty ordinary compound to me - not like "good morning" or "ginger ale" where you can't just use what you know about the two words to figure out what the compound must mean.

Some cases are basically impossible "Crash blossoms" you don't stand any chance without knowing why we call them that

Some are middling difficult, "Home Secretary" requires that you know every meaning for the two words and then you happen to pick the correct obscure meaning, a "Secretary" could be in charge, and "Home" could mean the entire country as distinct from everywhere else.

But "Hospital bills" doesn't seem even marginally difficult

[quesera]

I had to look up "crash blossoms"! But that's just an idiom, which is always tricky in translation. It might also be slang. Idioms and slang are borderline dictionary material, different editors make different choices, and they change over time.

But "ginger ale" seems straightforward to me. It's an ale, flavored with ginger. Not even idiomatic, just descriptive. Root beer. Grape soda. Orange chicken.

[tialaramex]

> But "ginger ale" seems straightforward to me. It's an ale, flavored with ginger

Ginger ale is in fact, not an ale, it's a soft drink. It is distantly related to Ginger Beer and some variants of Ginger Beer are alcoholic like ales, but Ginger ale was conceived as a soft drink and today continues as a soft drink.

[Wobbles42]

There seems to be a lot of overlap between this compound word concept and idioms. Both are largely atomic, defy analysis via individual word definition, and fairly language (and culture or dialect) specific.

Dictionaries are also language specific. We don't necessarily expect a 1:1 mapping of words between languages. I have personally always wondered if this subtley shapes thoughts in different languages as well.

[below43]

In most English speaking countries it's a far from common phrase (ie. it's very USA-centric).

[quesera]

OK. But is the meaning any less literally-obvious than "grocery bills" or "electricity bills"?

Maybe you don't have "hospital bills". I don't have "landscaping bills", but I know exactly what they are.