Neologisms and Word-formation processes
Neologism: A new word that is created through word-formation processes.
Neologisms are spontaneous and created to keep pace with social change. Factors such as technology, fashion, medicine, and food have generated spectacular changes in vocabulary.
It can be argued that the most common source of new words is formed by affixing.
Types of neologisms:
- ‘e-mail’ & ‘Google’ are modern examples
- ‘sleep’ & ‘stop’ are historic examples.
Neologisms are spontaneous and created to keep pace with social change. Factors such as technology, fashion, medicine, and food have generated spectacular changes in vocabulary.
It can be argued that the most common source of new words is formed by affixing.
Types of neologisms:
- Abbreviations: Shortening an existing word to form a new one.
Advertisement à Ad
Telephone à Phone
- Acronyms: A new word formed from the initial letters of a group of words and is pronounced as a single word.
AIDS
NASA
- Affixing: Adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words to form new words. Many affixes in English use Latin and Greek elements. ( ‘Auto’ ‘Audio’ ‘Magni’ ‘Poly’ )
-Prefix: A morpheme placed at the beginning of a word. Can be used to:
Convey negative forms; ‘disobey’ ‘unhelpful’
Time; ‘Premature’ ‘Postgraduate’ ‘Midnight’
Size or degree; ‘Miniskirt’ ‘Superman’
- Suffix: A morpheme added at the end of a word. Examples include:
‘-tion’ ‘-ship’ ‘-ness’ ‘-able’
Some words may have both a prefix and a suffix: ‘unfriendly’ ‘uncomfortable’ ‘irregularly’
- Infix: An affix placed in the base of a word. Commonly used in colloquial language:
‘fanbloodytastic’ ‘Absobleedinlutely’
- Back-formation: Form of abbreviation in which a word is shortened and is placed into a new word category. (Usually, a noun is shortened by removing an affix to form a verb)
- Donationà Donate
- Editor à Edit
- Babysitter à Baby-sit
- Blending: Parts of two words are blended together. Enough of each word is left so that the two elements are recognizable:
- Hotel + motor à Motel
- Breakfast + lunch à Brunch
- Smoke + fog à Smog
- Conversion/ Functional shift: Words from one lexical category is changed to another.
- The adjective ‘green’ changes to the noun ‘green’ when referring to golf.
- ‘e-mail’ & ‘Google’ are modern examples
- ‘sleep’ & ‘stop’ are historic examples.
- Coinage: The creation of new words not derived from any others.
- ‘Naff’ ‘Gizmo’ ‘Snazzy’
- Compounding: Combining two existing words to make a longer word.
- Tea + pot à Teapot
- Earth + quake à Earthquake
- Run + way à Runway
- Initialism: The first letter of a group of words is used, but the finishing product cannot be pronounced as a word. ‘BBC’