- Explain what word-formation studies and how it relates to lexicology and morphology.
- Distinguish nine major processes used to create words.
- Recognize each process from its structure and examples.
Understanding How Words Are Formed
Word-formation explains how languages generate vocabulary and specialized terms.
Languages need vocabulary for new ideas, products, and concepts.Word-formationis the linguistic study of how words are generated. It examines the creation of a completely new word as well as the construction of a new linguistic concept.
This process expands vocabulary and supplies specialized terminology. It studies derived words in relation to their origins, functions, productivity, and use in different styles of speech. Traditionally, it belongs tolexicology, the study of the form, meaning, and behavior of words. It is also associated withmorphologybecausemorphemeshelp create new words. For that reason, word-formation is also calledderivational morphology.
Nine Ways to Build Words
Words may be invented, borrowed, combined, shortened, reclassified, or constructed with affixes.
The nine processes considered here are coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, back formation, acronyms, conversion, and derivation.
Inventing Words Through Coinage
Coinage is uncommon, but it occurs more often in rapidly changing cultures and societies, particularly in media, business, and medical research. New terms may be created for ideas, processes, and products. A trademark can later be adopted by the public and become part of everyday language.
- Xerox began as the name of a photocopier brand and is also used as a verb.
- Other invented names include Kodak, Exxon, Google, Facebook, and Aspirin.
Recall a time when you used Google as a verb. Which other brand names can you identify that are now used as ordinary words?
Adopting Words Through Borrowing
Borrowing occurs when languages come into contact through events such as conquest and invasion or through geographical closeness. Across its 1,500-year history, English has taken words from hundreds of languages.
A borrowed form does not remain an exact copy. It adjusts to the sound, word-structure, and sentence-structure patterns of the receiving language. For instance, English uses the German wordSemesterwith a different pronunciation.
- Arabic: alcohol, algebra, coffee
- Dutch: boss, cookie, yacht
- French: mutton, government, manner
- Italian: piano, violin, spaghetti
- Czech: robot
- Spanish: barbecue, canyon, tornado
- Turkish: yogurt, kebab
Joining Complete Words by Compounding
- black + board → blackboard
- heart + felt → heartfelt
- brother + in + law → brother-in-law
Although a compound contains multiple elements, it operates grammatically and semantically as one word. Its written form may be open, hyphenated, or solid.
| Style | Arrangement | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Open | A space separates the elements | toy store, diving board, flower pot |
| Hyphenated | A hyphen joins the elements | flower-pot, air-brake, ship-owner |
| Solid | No space or hyphen appears | flowerpot, washroom, pickpocket |
The preferred spelling partly depends on the variety of English. British English uses hyphenation more often, while American English tends more toward open or solid spellings. Both varieties still use hyphens.
Some compound meanings follow directly from their elements: aboathousestores boats, and abookstoresells books. Other compounds must be learned as complete words. Aredcoatis a British soldier, ahot dogis a kind of food, and aturncoatis a traitor.
Primary stress generally falls on the first part of a compound, as in AIRcraft and CHEWing gum.
| Combination | Examples | Resulting class |
|---|---|---|
| Noun + Noun | sunrise, handshake | Noun |
| Verb + Noun | call girl, dance hall | Noun |
| Adjective + Noun | darkroom, highbrow | Noun |
| Noun + Adjective | seasick, grass-green | Adjective |
| Pronoun + Noun | he-goat, she-wolf | Noun |
| Preposition + Verb | overtake, undergo | Verb |
| Preposition + Noun | onlooker, off-day | Noun |
Because many grammatical combinations are possible, compounding is a highly productive process in English.
Merging Word Parts by Blending
A blend shortens its source words instead of retaining both of them in full, which distinguishes blending from compounding.
| Blend | Source words |
|---|---|
| smog | smoke + fog |
| brunch | breakfast + lunch |
| motel | motor + hotel |
| heliport | helicopter + airport |
| electrocute | electro + execute |
| Eurovision | European + television |
| newscast | news + broadcast |
| paratroops | parachute + troops |
| telecast | television + broadcast |
| travelogue | travel + catalogue |
Randolph Quirk (1985) identifies acronyms, clipping, and blending as three highly productive English processes involving abbreviation.
Shortening Words by Clipping
| Clipped form | Original word | Part removed |
|---|---|---|
| phone | telephone | Beginning |
| plane | airplane | Beginning |
| ad | advertisement | Ending |
| exam | examination | Ending |
| flu | influenza | Beginning and ending; the middle remains |
| fridge | refrigerator | Beginning and ending, with adjusted spelling |
Clipped vocabulary commonly sounds informal, and the shorter and longer forms may not suit identical contexts.Examnormally refers to an academic test, whereas a medical checkup usesexamination. Spelling can also be modified to reflect pronunciation, as inmicfrommicrophoneandbikefrombicycle.
Reducing Words Through Back Formation
The label reflects the appearance that the shorter word was made backward from the longer one. Speakers may treat the longer form as a derived word and reverse that derivation.
| Verb | Noun |
|---|---|
| donate | donation |
| beautify | beauty |
| revise | revision |
| edit | editor |
| televise | television |
| play | player |
A recurring pattern reduces a noun ending in -ion or -er to form a verb.
Building Forms from Initial Letters
For example, NATO is assembled from the initial letters of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. There are two principal pronunciation patterns.
- Forms spoken as whole words: NATO, UNESCO, COBOL.
- Forms spoken letter by letter, also known as alphabetisms: VIP, FBI, TB, TV.
Established written forms tend to omit periods between their letters, especially in British English. A component letter generally represents a whole word or a word part, as TB represents tuberculosis.
Changing Word Class Through Conversion
Some related noun–verb pairs show a small pronunciation change, often involving stress or voicing.
| Noun | Verb |
|---|---|
| abuse | abuse |
| relief | relieve |
| advice | advise |
| house | house |
| use | use |
| belief | believe |
| grief | grieve |
| half | halve |
Thus, conversion is not invariably “zero” in sound, although spelling stays identical or nearly identical.
Adding Affixes Through Derivation
Affixes cannot function independently as words. Derivation, a central part of morphology, uses three types of affix.
- Prefix: placed before a root, as in un + happy → unhappy, re + write → rewrite, dis + like → dislike, and im + possible → impossible.
- Suffix: attached after a root, as in fear + less → fearless, quick + ly → quickly, play + ing → playing, and code + er → coder.
- Infix: inserted inside a word. This pattern is rare in English but occurs in plural forms of some compounds: cupful → cupsful, passerby → passersby, brother-in-law → brothers-in-law, and mother-in-law → mothers-in-law. The plural affix interrupts the original form.
Identify a word containing both a prefix and a suffix. What change does each affix make to its meaning?
Reviewing the Full Set of Processes
Each process follows a distinct method for expanding vocabulary.
Word-formation allows language to remain adaptable. The nine processes can be summarized in their original learning order.
- Coinage invents a wholly new word, often a product or company name.
- Borrowing brings a word into one language from another.
- Compounding joins two or more independent words.
- Blending merges shortened portions of two words.
- Clipping removes part of a longer word.
- Back formation produces a new form by taking an affix away from an existing word.
- Acronyms use initial letters to construct a new form.
- Conversion moves a word into another grammatical class without changing its basic form.
- Derivation adds a prefix, suffix, or infix to a root.
Together, these processes connect word-formation with morphology and lexicology. Speakers can enlarge language by adopting words, rearranging or shortening existing material, changing grammatical roles, adding affixes, or inventing new terms.
Common misconceptions
Watch out: Every compound's meaning can be determined by interpreting its separate elements.
Instead: Some compounds are transparent, but forms such as redcoat, hot dog, and turncoat have meanings that must be learned as complete words.
Watch out: Blending combines two complete words in the same way as compounding.
Instead: A blend combines shortened portions of two words; a compound retains its independent word elements.
Lesson recap
Word-formation studies the growth of vocabulary through nine processes: coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, back formation, acronyms, conversion, and derivation. These processes show how words may be invented, adopted, combined, shortened, shifted into new grammatical roles, or built with affixes.