a structure that consists of a distinguished atom, the functor and some number of arguments, which can be any Prolog terms
Compound terms are of the form f(t_1, t_2, ..., t_n) where is the functor of the compound term and t_i are terms, n is its arity. Lists and Pairs are also compound terms.
A term consisting of more than one word, where the words together represent a single concept.
A term consisting of more than one word or a phrase that represents a single concept. Compound terms must be constructed according to the guidelines contained in the Z39.19 NISO standards.
A compound term is a term that is an atom together with one or more arguments. For example, in the term father(X), father is the name, and is the first and only argument. The argument to a compound term can be another compound term, as in father(father(X)). Compound terms are recognized by the built-in predicate compound/1.