I'm certain this can't be the only example there is of a hyphenated verb, but it's the only one I can think of right now.
How should one appropriately convert "mouse-over" into the past tense? Should it be "moused-over" or "mouse-overed"?
Also, are there any other verb-preposition combinations like this that could be used as examples?
Best Answer
The term in question is phrasal verb which is defined as
When changing the tense of a phrasal verb, only the verb is affected, for the simple reason that adverbs and prepositions do not change with tense, as they are not verbs. It is also crucial to note that phrasal verbs do not come with hyphens. However, a number of them can be hyphenated or compounded to function as adjectives or nouns with related or unrelated meanings.
To use your example, the past tense of mouse over would be moused over, while the present participle would be mousing over. You could also hyphenate to make a noun, as in, "The trackball is so bad that a simple mouse-over to the top-left corner of the screen takes more than twenty seconds."
For reference, here is the definition of mouse over:
Some standard phrasal verbs, their tenses and their adjective/noun derivatives:
All this said, there are indeed some standard hyphenated verbs (these belong to the larger group of compound verbs, majority of which do not have a hypen, e.g. backstab, broadside, singsong, overtake, bypass, etc.), but these are not verb-preposition combinations, as you indicated. Rather, they terminate in verbs or are wholly verbal in composition. For these species, the tense change affects the word in its entirety. Examples:
However, there exists one (and there may be a few more) true hyphenated phrasal verb (verb-preposition) that is treated wholly as a verb: one-up
It appears, however, that this verb may be a back-formation from the original noun phrase and, later, adjective, one up.