Introduction: Why are new words needed?
Because of new inventions and changes, every language is in need of new words – borrowed, derived or otherwise formed – simply because new things need new words. The human community is steadily growing and developing, just as the tool we use to communicate: Language.
When new inventions and changes enter our lives, we are in the need of naming them and of course to communicate about them.
Language is dynamic, it changes constantly. Inter alia because native speakers like to play with their language, or because there are no ‘wrong’ words. The key here is usage: If a new word, however silly it may be, is used by many speakers of a language, it will probably survive and it can happen that one day, it is an everyday word and entered our dictionaries.
Especially in the last centuries, many word creations are spread amongst the language community. For example, if you take a look at the vast amount of new inventions made in the 20th and 21st century, it is obvious that the words we knew before were not enough to cover all these things. Exclusively in the 21st century, abbreviations were and still are everywhere, thanks to the internet (chat rooms and e-mail) and the cell phone (text messaging with its limited number of characters).
And of course there are language trends that come and go as time passes, for example youth language (college slang:cool, chill,wasted– Finegan 2007, 321) or the formerly mentioned abbreviations in the so-called txt spk
(language abbreviated to fit into text messages: cu,gr8,lol,etc.). There are old words with new meanings, like surf,bug and web, whose meanings have broadened since the new technological inventions, but there are many other ways in which new words are created: If there is a new thing and the language community has no word for it, there are several options to create a new one. In the past and the present, people used – and still use – a variety of methods to create new words, such as compounding, derivation or coinage.
How are new words created?
A. By Creating from Scratch
Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English language are just created from scratch, and often have little or no etymological pedigree. A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries. Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a similarly inexplicable way (e.g. jaw, askance, tantrum, conundrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, slum, log, dodge, fuss, prod, hunch, freak, bludgeon, slang, puzzle, surf, pour, slouch, bash, etc).
Words like gadget, blimp, raunchy, scam, nifty, zit, clobber, boffin, gimmick, jazz and googol have all appeared in the last century or two with no apparent etymology, and are more recent examples of this kind of novel creation of words. Additionally, some words that have existed for centuries in regional dialects or as rarely used terms, suddenly enter into popular use for little or no apparent reason (e.g. scrounge and seep, both old but obscure English words, suddenly came into general use in the early 20th Century).
Sometimes, if infrequently, a “nonce word” (created “for the nonce”, and not expected to be re-used or generalized) does become incorporated into the language. One example is James Joyce’s invention quark, which was later adopted by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann to name a new class of sub-atomic particle, and another is blurb, which dates back to 1907.
B. By Adopting or Borrowing
Loanwords, or borrowings, are words which are adopted into a native language from a different source language. Such borrowings have shaped the English language almost from its beginnings, as words were adopted from the classical languages as well as from successive wave of invasions (e.g. Vikings, Normans). Even by the 16th Century, long before the British Empire extended its capacious reach around the world, English had already adopted words from an estimated 50 other languages, and the vast majority of English words today are actually foreign borrowings of one sort or another.
Sometimes these adoptions have come by a circuitous route (e.g. the word orange originated with the Sanskrit naranj or naranga or narangaphalam or naragga, which became the Arabic naranjah and the Spanish naranja, entered English as a naranj, changed to a narange, then to an arange and finally an orange; the word garbage came to English originally from Latin, but only arrived via Old Italian, an Italian dialect and then Norman French). Sometimes the tortuous route and degrees of filtering through other languages can modify words so much that their original derivations are all but indiscernible (e.g. both coy and quiet come from the Latin word quietus; sordid and swarthy both come from the Latin sordere; entirety and integrity both derive from the Latin integritas; salary and sausage both originate with the Latin word sal; grammar and glamour are both descended from the same Greek word gramma; and gentle, gentile, genteel and jaunty all come from the Latin gentilis; etc).
C. By Adding Prefixes and Suffixes or Derivation
The ability to add affixes, whether prefixes (e.g. com-, con-, de-, ex-, inter-, pre-, pro-, re-, sub-, un-, etc) and suffixes (e.g. -al, -ence, -er, -ment, -ness, -ship, -tion, -ate, -ed, -ize, -able, -ful, -ous, -ive, -ly, -y, etc) makes English extremely flexible. This process, referred to as agglutination, is a simple way to completely alter or subtly revise the meanings of existing words, to create other parts of speech out of words (e.g. verbs from nouns, adverbs form adjectives, etc), or to create completely new words from new roots. There are very few rules in the addition of affixes in English, and Anglo-Saxon affixes can be attached to Latin or Greek roots, or vice versa. An extreme example is the word incomprehensibility, which is based on the simple root -hen- (original from Indo-European root word ghend- meaning to grasp or seize) with no less than 5 affixes: in- (not), com- (with), pre- (before), -ible (capable) and -ity (being).
However, the sheer variety and number of possible affixes in English can lead to some confusion. For instance, there is no single standard method for something as basic as making a noun into an adjective (-able, -al, -ous and -y are just some of the possibilities). There are at least nine different negation prefixes (a-, anti-, dis-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, non- and un-), and it is almost impossible for a non-native speaker to predict which is to be used with which root word. To make matters worse, some apparently negative forms do not even negate the meanings of their roots (e.g. flammable and inflammable, habitable and inhabitable, ravel and unravel).
Some affix additions are surprisingly recent. Officialdom and boredom joined the ancient word kingdom as recently as the 20th Century, and apolitical as the negation of political did not appear until 1952. Adding affixes remains the simplest and perhaps the commonest method of creating new words.
D. By Truncation or Clipping
Some words arise simply as shortened forms of longer words (exam, gym, lab, bus, vet, fridge, bra, pram, phone and burger are some obvious and well-used examples). Perhaps less obvious is the derivation of words like mob (from the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, meaning a fickle crowd), goodbye (a shortening of God-be-with-you) and hello (a shortened form of the Old English for “whole be thou”).
Leaving aside the common English practice of contracting multiple words like do not, you are, there will and that would into the single words don’t, you’re, there’ll and that’d, there are many other examples where multiple words or phrases have been contracted into single words (e.g. daisy was once a flower called day’s eye; shepherd was sheep herd; lord was originally loaf-ward; fortnight was fourteen-night; etc).
Acronyms are another example of this technique. While most acronyms (e.g. USA, IMF, OPEC, etc) remain as just a series of initial letters, some have been formed into words (e.g. laser from light amplification by stimulated emmission of radiation, radar from radio detection and ranging); quasar from quasi-stellar radio source; scuba from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus; etc).
E. By Fusing or Compounding Existing Words
Like many languages, English allows the formation of compound words by fusing together shorter words (e.g. airport, seashore, fireplace, footwear, wristwatch, landmark, flowerpot, etc), although it is not taken to the extremes of German or Dutch where extremely long and unwieldy word chains are commonplace. The concatenation of words in English may even allow for different meanings depending on the order of combination (e.g. houseboat/boathouse, basketwork/workbasket, casebook/bookcase, etc).
The root words may be run together with no separation (as in the examples above), or they may be hyphenated (e.g. self-discipline, part-time, mother-in-law) or even left as separate words (e.g. fire hydrant, commander in chief), although the rules for such constructions are unclear at best.
During the English Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, compounding classical elements of Greek and Latin (e.g. photograph, telephone, etc) was a very common method of English word formation, and the process continues even today. A large part of the scientific and technical lexicon of English consists of such classical compounds.
Sometimes words or phonemes are blended rather than combined whole, forming a “portmanteau word” with two meanings packed into one word, or with a meaning intermediate between the two constituent words (e.g. brunch, which blends breakfast and lunch; motel, which blends motor and hotel; electrocute, which blends electric and execute; smog, which blends smoke and fog; guesstimate, which blends guess and estimate; telethon, which blends telephone and marathon; chocoholic, which blends chocolate and alcoholic; etc). Lewis Carroll was perhaps the first to deliberately use this technique for literary effect, when he introduced new words like slithy, frumious, galumph, etc, in his poetry in the 19th Century.
F. By Changing the Meaning of Existing Words
The drift of word meanings over time often arises, often but not always due to catachresis (the misuse, either deliberate or accidental, of words). By some estimates, over half of all words adopted into English from Latin have changed their meaning in some way over time, often drastically. For example, smart originally meant sharp, cutting or painful; handsome merely meant easily-handled (and was generally derogatory); bully originally meant darling or sweetheart; sad meant full, satiated or satisfied; and insult meant to boast, brag or triumph in an insolent way. A more modern example is the changing meaning of gay from merry to homosexual (and, in some circles in more recent years, to stupid or bad).
Some words have changed their meanings many times. Nice originally meant stupid or foolish; then, for a time, it came to mean lascivious or wanton; it then went through a whole host of alternative meanings (including extravagant, elegant, strange, slothful, unmanly, luxurious, modest, slight, precise, thin, shy, discriminating and dainty), before settling down into its modern meaning of pleasant and agreeable in the late 18th Century. Conversely, silly originally meant blessed or happy, and then passed through intermediate meanings of pious, innocent, harmless, pitiable, feeble and feeble-minded, before finally ending up as foolish or stupid. Buxom originally meant obedient to God in Middle English, but it passed through phases of meaning humble and submissive, obliging and courteous, ready and willing, bright and lively, and healthy and vigorous, before settling on its current very specific meaning relating to a plump and well-endowed woman.
Some words have become much more specific than their original meanings. For instance, starve originally just mean to die, but is now much more specific; a forest was originally any land used for hunting, regardless of whether it was covered in trees; deer once referred to any animal, not just the specific animal we now associate with the word; girl was once a young person of either sex; and meat originally covered all kinds of food (as in the phrase “meat and drink”).
Some words came to mean almost the complete opposite of their original meanings. For instance, counterfeit used to mean a legitimate copy; brave once implied cowardice; crafty was originally a term of praise; cute used to mean bow-legged; enthusiasm and zeal were both once disparaging words; manufacture originally meant to make by hand; awful meant deserving of awe; egregious originally connoted eminent or admirable; artificial was a positive description meaning full of skilful artifice; etc.
A related category is where an existing word comes to be used with another grammatical function, often a different part of speech, a process known as functional shift. Examples include: the creation of the nouns a commute, a bore and a swim from the original verbs to commute, to bore and to swim; the creation of the verbs to bottle, to catalogue and to text from the original nouns bottle, catalogue and text; the creation of the verbs to dirty, to empty and to dry from the original adjectives dirty, empty and dry, etc. Modern language purists often condemn such developments, although they have occurred throughout the history of English, and in some cases may even reclaim the original sense of a word (e.g. impact was originally introduced as a verb, then established itself predominantly as a noun, and has only recently begun to be used a verb once more).
G. By Errors
According to the “Oxford English Dictionary”, there are at least 350 words in English dictionaries (most of them thankfully quite obscure) that owe their existence purely to typographical errors or other misrenderings.
There are many more words, often in quite common use, that have arisen over time due to mishearings (e.g. shamefaced from the original shamefast, penthouse from pentice, sweetheart from sweetard, buttonhole from button-hold, etc).
Mrs. Mapalprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play “The Rivals”, was famous for her “malapropisms” like illiterate, reprehend, etc, but these never gained common currency. Likewise, it seems unlikely that “Bushisms” (named for US President Bush’s unfortunate tendency to mangle the language) like misunderestimate, or Sarah Palin’s refudiate will ever become part of the everyday language, although there are many who would argue that they deserve to.
Many misused words (as opposed to newly-coined words) have, for better or worse, become so widely used in their new context that they may be considered to be generally accepted, particularly in the USA, although many strict grammarians insist on their distinctness (e.g. alternate to mean alternative, momentarily to mean presently, disinterested to mean uninterested, i.e. to mean e.g., flaunt to mean flout, historic to mean historical, imply to mean infer, etc).
H. By Back Formation
Some words are “back-formed”, where a new word is formed by removing an actual, or often just a supposed or incorrectly identified, affix. A good example of back-formation is the old word pease, which was mistakenly assumed to be a plural, and thus led to the creation of a new “singular” word, pea. Similarly, asset was back-formed from the singular noun assets (originally from the Anglo-Norman asetz).
More often, though, a new word for a different part of speech is derived form an older form (e.g. laze from lazy, beg from beggar, greed from greedy, rove from rover, burgle from burglar, edit from editor, difficult from difficulty, resurrect from resurrection, insert from insertion, project from projection, grovel from groveling, sidle from sideling or sidelong, etc).
I. By Imitation of Sounds
Words may be formed by the deliberate imitation of sounds they describe (onomatopoeia). Often this kind of onomatopoeic formation is surprisingly ancient, and Old English literature is usually described as highly onomatopoeic, alliterative and percussive. Sometimes, the imitation may have originally occurred in a source language, and only later borrowed into English, and by its very nature sound imitation tends to result in similar cognates in several languages. Some philologists have suggested that the first human languages developed as imitations of natural sounds (so-called “bow-wow theories”), and imitative abilities certainly seem to have played some role in the evolution of language.
Examples include boo, bow-wow, tweet, boom, tinkle, rattle, buzz, click, hiss, bang, plop, cuckoo, quack, beep, etc, but there are many many more. Some words, like squirm for example, are not strictly onomatopoeic but are nevertheless imitative to some extent (e.g like a worm)
J. By Transfer of Proper Nouns
A surprising number of words have been created by the transfer of the proper names of people, places and things into words which then become part of the generalized vocabulary of the language, also known as eponyms. Examples include maverick (after the American cattleman, Samuel Augustus Maverick); saxophone (after the Belgian musical-instrument maker, Adolphe Sax); quisling (after the pro-Nazi Norwegian leader, Vidkun Quisling); sandwich (after the fourth Earl of Sandwich); silhouette (after the French finance minister, Etienne de Silhouette); kafkaesque (after the Czech novelist, Franz Kafka); quixotic (after the romantic, impractical hero of a Cervantes novel); boycott (after Charles Boycott, the shunned Irish land agent for an absentee landlord); etc. Other common eponyms include biro, bloomers, boffin, chauvinism, diesel, galvanize, guillotine, leotard, lesbian, lynch, marathon, mesmerize, odyssey, sadism, shrapnel, spartan, teddy, wellington, etc.
Many terms for political, philosophical or religious doctrines are based on the names of their founders or chief exponents (e.g. Marxism, Aristotelianism, Platonic, stoic, Christianity, etc). Similarly, many scientific terms and units of measurement are named after their inventors (e.g. ampere, angstrom, joule, watt, etc). Increasingly, in the 20th Century, specific brand names have become generalized descriptions (e.g. hoover, kleenex, xerox, aspirin, google, etc).
Additional Word Formation Processes
K. By Abbreviation
Abbreviation is the word formation process in which a word or phrase is shortened. Initialisms are a type of abbreviation formed by the initial letters of a word or phrase. Although abbreviation is largely a convention of written language, sometimes abbreviations carry over into spoken language. Abbreviation is related to both the word formation processes of clipping and blending. For example:
Written Abbreviations
- – April
- cm – centimeter(s)
- – died, died in
- – department
- – doctor
- – Junior
- – Mister
- oz – ounce(s)
- – Sunday
- yd – yard(s)
Spoken-Written Abbreviations
- M. – ante meridiem [in the morning]
- C.E. – Before Common Era
- GOP – Grand Old Party (Republican Party)
- HIV – Human Immunodeficiency Virus
- e. – id est [that is]
- JFK – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- OJ – orange juice
- PMS – premenstrual syndrome
- RSVP – répondez s’il vous plait
- VIP – very important person
L. By Using Acronyms
Acronyms are words formed by the word formation process in which an initialism is pronounced as a word. For example, HIV is an initialism for Human Immunodeficiency Virus that is spoken as the three letters H-I-V. However, AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome that is spoken as the word aids. Other examples of acronyms in English include:
- ASAP – as soon as possible
- AWOL – absent without leave
- laser – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
- NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NASDAQ – National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations
- PIN – personal identification number
- radar – radio detection and ranging
- scuba – self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
- TESOL – Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
- WASP – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
M. By Eponyms
Eponyms are a word form by the word formation process in which a new word is formed from the name of a real of fictitious person. For example:
- atlas – Atlas
- boycott – Charles C. Boycott
- cardigan – James Thomas Brudnell, 7th Earl of Cardigan
- cereal – Ceres
- dunce – John Duns Scotus
- guillotine – Joseph Ignace Guillotin
- jacuzzi – Candido Jacuzzi
- luddite – Ned Ludd
- malapropism – Mrs. Malaprop
- mesmerize – Franz Anton Mesmer
- mirandize – Ernesto A. Miranda
- narcissistic – Narcissus
- nicotine – Jean Nicot
- pasteurization – Louis Pasteur
- poinsettia – Noel Roberts Poinsett
- praline – César de Choiseul, Count Plessis–Praslin
- sadistic – Marquis de Sade
- salmonella – Daniel Elmer Salmon
- sandwich – John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich
- volcano – Vulcan
N. By Coinages
Coinage is the word formation process in which a new word is created either deliberately or accidentally without using the other word formation processes and often from seemingly nothing. For example, the following list of words provides some common coinages found in everyday English:
- aspirin
- escalator
- heroin
- band-aid
- factoid
- Frisbee
- Google
- kerosene
- Kleenex
- Laundromat
- linoleum
- muggle
- nylon
- psychedelic
- quark
- Xerox
- Zipper
Notice that many coinages start out as brand names for everyday items such as Kleenex for a facial tissue. Coinages are also referred to simply as neologisms, the word neologism meaning “new word.”
O. By Using Nonce Words
Nonce words are new words formed through any number of word formation processes with the resulting word meeting a lexical need that is not expected to recur. Nonce words are created for the nonce, the term for the nonce meaning “for a single occasion.” For example, the follow list of words provides some nonce words with definitions as identified in the Oxford English Dictionary.
- cotton-wool – to stuff or close (the ears) with cotton-wool.
- jabberwock – The name of the fabulous monster in Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky. Hence in allusive and extended uses, especially “incoherent or nonsensical expression.” So jabberwocky is invented language, meaningless language, nonsensical behavior; also nonsensical, meaningless, topsy-turvy.
- touch-me-not-ishness – having a “touch-me-not” character; stand-off-ish.
- twi-thought – an indistinct or vague thought.
- witchcraftical – The practices of a witch or witches; the exercise of supernatural power supposed to be possessed by persons in league with the devil or evil spirits. Power or influence like that of a magician; bewitching or fascinating attraction or charm.
Note that although most nonce words come in and out of use very quickly, some nonce words catch on and become everyday words. For example, Lewis Carroll coined the word chortle, a blend of chuckle and snort, for the poem Jabberwocky in the book Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There; unlike most nonce words, however, chortle has gained acceptance as a legitimate blended word.
P. By Calquing
Calquing is the word formation process in which a borrowed word or phrase is translated from one language to another. For example, the following common English words are calqued from foreign languages:
- beer garden – German – Biergarten
- blue-blood – Spanish – sangre azul
- commonplace – Latin – locus commūnis
- flea market – French – marché aux puces
- free verse – French – vers libre
- loanword – German – Lehnwort
- long time no see – Chinese – hǎo jiǔ bu jiàn
- pineapple – Dutch – pijnappel
- scapegoat – Hebrew – ez ozel
- wisdom tooth – Latin – dēns sapientiae
Calques are also referred to as root-for-root or word-for-word translations.
Q. By Conversion
Conversion is the word formation process in which a word of one grammatical form becomes a word of another grammatical form without any changes to spelling or pronunciation. For example, the noun email appeared in English before the verb: a decade ago I would have sent you an email (noun) whereas now I can either send you an email (noun) or simply email (verb) you. The original noun email experienced conversion, thus resulting in the new verb email. Conversion is also referred to as zero derivation or null derivation with the assumption that the formal change between words results in the addition of an invisible morpheme. However, many linguistics argue for a clear distinction between the word formation processes of derivation and conversion.
Noun to Verb Conversion
The most productive form of conversion in English is noun to verb conversion. The following list provides examples of verbs converted from nouns:
Noun – Verb
- access – to access
- bottle – to bottle
- can – to can
- closet – to closet
- email – to email
- eye – to eye
- fiddle – to fiddle
- fool – to fool
- Google – to google
- host – to host
Verb to Noun Conversion
Another productive form of conversion in English is verb to noun conversion. The following list provides examples of nouns converted from verbs:
Verb – Noun
to alert – alert
to attack – attack
to call – call
to clone – clone
to command – command
to cover – cover
to cry – cry
to experience – experience
to fear – fear
to feel – feel
to hope – hope
to increase – increase
to judge – judge
to laugh – laugh
Other Conversions
Conversion also occurs, although less frequently, to and from other grammatical forms. For example:
- adjective to verb: green → to green (to make environmentally friendly)
- preposition to noun: up, down → the ups and downs of life
- conjunction to noun: if, and, but → no ifs, ands, or buts
- interjection to noun: ho ho ho → I love the ho ho hos of Christmastime.
R. Reduplication
Reduplication is the formation of a new word by doubling a word, either with change of initial consonants (teenie-weenie, walkie-talkie), with change of vowel (chit-chat, zig-zag) or without change (night-night, so-so and win-win).
Sources:
Click to access wfp.pdf
http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/issues_new.html
Multiple processes
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/esl-lesson-plans/59679-forming-new-words-compounds-clipping-and-blends/
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/esl-teaching-tips/59719-forming-new-words-abbreviations-acronyms-and-eponyms/
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/esl-lesson-plans/60060-formation-types-coinages-nonce-loanwords-and-calques/
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