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but can't you basically make anything a composite noun in German? That it's a single word doesn't really help you decided if it has enough presence unto itself to be defined in the dictionary.

Seems like they would have just as much of a problem since the issue is delineating when a "phrase" becomes a "word"

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More to the point, how to German dictionaries handle this?

Is there a distinction between words that get enumerated and compound nouns that do not?

It does seem, though, that German speakers might be more comfortable with the fuzziness that apparently exists at the edges of what the word "word" means.

In general, transparent compounds, i.e. those whose meaning can be derived from the elements, are not in the dictionary. Mushroom soup is transparent; Krankenhaus, which means hospital, but is literally sick-people home, isn't.

not anything. As a German I see no way to compound "boiling water". It remains two words: "kochendes Wasser".

'Boiling' isn't a noun.

true, but you'd be wrong to assume that Germans only compound words if both parts are nouns, e.g. "Gehweg" (walk way) and "Springseil" (jump rope) use the base of a verb. We do actually have "Kochwasser" ("kochen" means "to cook", "kochend" means "boiling") but that's not boiling water ("kochendes Wasser") but for water used for cooking.

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