The word formation process

conversion

Category change or a function shift. A change in the function of a word; when a noun becomes to be used as a verb. (bottle becomes bottled / a guess becomes to guess / a dirty floor becomes to dirty).

neologism

a new word

hypocronism

A particular type of reduction. (Favored in Australian and British English) In the process a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end. Examples: Moving pictures-movie, television-telly, barbecue-barbie, bookmaker-bookie, handkerchief-hankie, take a sickie (a sick day from work).

coinage

Invention of new words. (to google, a kleenex, xerox-machine etc.)

eponyms

Names of people, places or companies that are associated with a particular product or thing, and that become used as general vocab items (Biro, sandwich, Alzheimer, jeans, Volt etc. )

blending

The process of combining the beginning of one word and the end of another word to form a new word. (Smoke+fog = smog / motor+hotel = motel)

compounding

The process of combining two or more words t form a new word. (bookcase, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook etc)

derivation

The process of forming new words by adding affixes (prefix, suffix, infixes). (unhappy, joyful, boyish, misrepresent etc.)

clipping

The process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form. (ad = advertisement / gas = gasoline etc.)

backformation

The process of reducing a word such as a noun to a shorter version and using it as a new word such as a verb (to babysit from babysitter / to televise from television / to donate from donation).

loan-translation

a special type of borrowing in which each element of a word is translated into the borrowing language, also called calque (sky-scraper for wolkenkrabber).

acronyms

new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. (CD, VCR, radar, pin-code, ATM machine, zip code etc.)

analogy

process of forming a new word to be similar in some way to an existing word.

calque

same as loan-translation. A special type of borrowing in which each element of a word is translated into the borrowing language, (sky-scraper for wolkenkrabber).

etymology

study of the origin and history of a word

borrowing

the taking over of words fro other languages