English Word Formation Processes

While many words in English have been inherited from older stages of the language, many more words have come into it by other means.  Indeed, we are always adopting new words into English, and below are described some of the methods and general word formation processes by which this is done.

Acronyms:  These words are formed by taking the initial sounds or letters of the words of a phrase and uniting them into a combination that is itself pronounceable as a separate word.  Thus NATO is an acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, laser for light amplification through the stimulated emission of radiation, and radar for radio detection and ranging.

Backformation:  Backformation makes use of a process called analogy to derive new words, but in a rather backwards manner, that is from an older word that is mistakenly assumed to be a derivative of it.  For example, we have words such as revision and revise and supervision and supervise.  Revision is formed by regular derivation from revision + ion.  When television was invented, the verb televise was back formed on the basis of analogy with revision and revise, that is:

            revision : revise :: television : X

To cite another example, the verb donate was formed on the basis of pairs such as creation—create.  We borrowed donation from French and back formed donate.

            creation : create :: donation : X

  Another example, in the original the final consonant [-z] of pease is not, as it seems to the ear to be, the English plural suffix –s.  It is, in fact, not a suffix at all.  But by the 17^th century, pease was mistaken for a plural, and a new singular, pea, was derived from a word that was itself a singular, precisely as if we were to derive a form *chee from cheese under the impression that cheese was plural; then we should have one chee, two cheese just as we have one pea, two peas.

  One very regular source of back-formed verbs in English is based on the pattern:  worker—work.  The assumption seems to have been that if there is a noun ending in –er (or something close in sound), then we can create a verb for what noun –er does.  Hence, an editor must edit, a sculptor must  sculpt, and burglars, peddlers, and swindlers must burgle, peddle,  and swindle. 

Blending:  A blend is a combination of the parts of two words, usually the beginning of one word and the end of another:  smog from smoke and fog, brunch from breakfast and lunch, and chortle from chuckle and snort.  (Lewis Carroll invented this blend, and his poem “Jabberwocky” contains several other examples of interesting blends.  Carroll called them “portmanteau words.”)

Borrowing:  Foreign words are always being “borrowed” into other languages, especially to accompany new ideas, inventions, products, and so on.  When speakers imitate a word from a foreign language and at least partly adapt it in sound or grammar to their native speech patters, the process is called “borrowing,” and the word thus borrowed is a “loanword.”  A few examples:  alcohol (Arabic), boss (Dutch), croissant (French), lilac (Persian), piano (Italian), pretzel (German), robot (Czech), tycoon (Japanese), yoghurt (Turkish), zebra (Bantu).

  A special type of borrowing is described as “loan-translation” or “calque.”  In this process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language.  For example:  English hot dogs becomes Spanish perros calientes, English skyscraper becomes French le gratte-ciel.

Clipping:  Frequently we shorten words without paying attention to the derivational morphology of the word (or related words).  We see here again the element of reduction, already seen in blending.  Exam has been clipped from  examination, dorm from dormitory, and both taxi and cab from  taxi cab (itself a clipping from taximeter cabriolet).  Because clipping often ignores lexical and morphemic boundaries and cuts instead in the middle of a morpheme, we end up creating new morphemes and enriching the stock of potential building material for making other words.

Coinage:  Words may also be created without using any of the methods described above and without employing any other word or word parts already in existence; that is, they may be created out of thin air.  Such brand names as Xerox, Kodak, and Exxon were made up without reference to any other word, as were the common words pooch and snob.  Also called “root creation.”

Compounding:  Two or more existing words are put together to form a new word:  blackboard, expressway, and air conditioner.  “Amalgamated compounds” are those words in which the compounded elements are so closely welded together that their origins as compounds is obscured.  For example, daisy from Old English dQgesēage, “day’s eye,” lord from OE hlaf (‘loaf’)  plus weard (‘guardian’), and sheriff from OE scīr (‘shire’) plus rēfa (‘reeve’).

Derivation:  As you know, English has a number of derivational morphemes that we use to derive words.  There are other prefixes (added to the beginning of a stem) or suffixes (added to the end of a stem).  Some of these derivational morphemes change the grammatical function of a word and some do not; they change the meaning of a word.  Some common prefixes:  re-, dis-, un-, anti-, ante-, in-, pre-, post-, sub-.  Some common suffixes are:  -ly, -ness, -y, -er, -ity, -ation, -ful, -able, -al.

Conversion or Functional Shift:  A new word may be created simply by shifting the part of speech to another one without changing the form of the word—without adding any affixes.  Laugh, run, buy, steal are used as nouns as well as verbs, while  position, process, contrast are nouns from which verbs have been formed.

Morphological Misanalysis or False/Folk Etymology:  Sometimes people hear a word and misanalyze it either because they “hear” a familiar word or morpheme in the word, or for other, unknown, reasons.  These misanalyses can introduce words or morphemes.  For example, the suffix –burger.  (Hamburger is a clipping from Hamburger Steak.)  -burger has since been added to other types of foods:  cheeseburger, pizzaburger, salmonburger, veggieburger, steakburger.  Another example concerns the creation of (a)holic from a peculiar analysis of alcoholic.  This suffix can be found in words such as workaholic and chocaholic.  Sometimes a phrase is misheard or misanalyzed, resulting in examples such as:  pinching needles from pins and needles, take it for granite from take it for granted, chester drawers from chest of drawers.

Proper Names:  Many places, inventions, activities, etc., are named for persons somehow connected with them; for instance, lynch by way of Lynch’s Law, from the Virginian captain William Lynch [1742-1820], who led a campaign of “corporeal punishment” against those “unlawful and abandoned wretches” who were harassing the good people of Pittsylvania County.  Boycott comes from Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott [1832-1897] who, because as a land agent he refused to accept rents at figures fixed by the tenants, was the best-known target of the policy of ostracization of the Irish Land League agitators.  Other unchanged names of actual people:  ampere, bloomer, bowie (knife) cardigan, chesterfield (overcoat or sofa), davenport, derby, derrick, derringer, graham (flour), guy, valentine, watt, zeppelin.