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
