Is ice cream a compound or mixture?

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My question relates to a term which is described by more than one word.Is the term "ice cream" one word or two?

According to my research, the Oxford Dictionary and the three other dictionaries that I consulted give some wiggle room when it comes to expressing exactly what a word is.You can see definitions below.

"Any segment of written or printed discourse ordinarily appearing between spaces or between a space and a punctuation mark"

A single meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

They use words like typically and ordinarily indicating that there is a possibility for multi-word words, but don't give sample sentences.MM doesn't spell out what a single unit is.I think that "ice cream" is two units of language, rather than one.

When looking up compound word examples, they use either a backstab or a hyphen to cut them into one clear-cut word.

With this dilemma in mind and as a yes or no question, is "ice cream" as is, no hyphen and not stuck together as "Ice-cream", one word, or two?

We don't say that we want an iced cream, cream with ice, or cream which is iced.I want ice cream.When something is un-modifiable, that means it is a single unit.It may look like it has two words, but they have different meanings, so that particular word needs to be spoken in one breath to convey a particular meaning.Ice cream is a single word.It has a different meaning.

Now think about, 'beautiful day.'The meanings of Beautiful and Day are different.The word 'beautiful day' is not a single word because it can be used in different ways.In 'beautiful day', beautiful is an epithet.Is ice cream an object here if we start representing it as having two words?

When you're speaking, you stress the combination of the words.The following children's joke work because of this.

There is a red house.There is a blue house next to it.Where is the white house?I don't know.Where is the white house?The White House is located in Washington, D.C.

In the math video "Not Knot", the narrator pronounces "a whole number" like it was a compound word.It was obvious to me that something was wrong when I watched it for the first time.

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