Word formation: how English makes new words

Where new words come from

English gains new words constantly: selfie, to ghost, vlog, COVID. Very few are invented from nothing. Most are made from material the language already has, by a small set of regular word-formation processes. Knowing these processes lets you explain a new word, and lets you predict which new words English will accept.

1. Derivation

Derivation is the most productive process in English: a derivational affix (Topic 3) is added to a base. Happy → unhappy → unhappiness; modern → modernize → modernization; global → globalize. Productive affixes such as -ize, -able, -ness, un- and re- attach freely to new bases (Googleable, unfollow), while unproductive ones such as -th (warmth, width) no longer make new words.

2. Compounding

Compounding joins two or more free morphemes into one word. English compounds are written three ways: closed (blackboard, notebook), hyphenated (mother-in-law, well-known) and open (high school, bus stop).

• The rightmost word is usually the head: it decides the word class and the basic meaning. A bookcase is a kind of case; a case book would be a kind of book.
• Compounds take stress on the first element: a BLACKboard (for chalk) versus a black BOARD (any board that is black), a GREENhouse versus a green HOUSE (Topic 2).
• Many compounds are not literal. A hot dog is not a dog, and a blackbird can be a different colour; such compounds are exocentric or idiomatic.

3. Blending and clipping

Blending joins parts of two words, usually the beginning of one and the end of the other:

Clipping shortens a word of more than one syllable without changing its meaning. The clipped form can keep the front (advertisement → ad, examination → exam, gasoline → gas), the back (telephone → phone, airplane → plane) or the middle (influenza → flu, refrigerator → fridge). Clipping starts in informal speech, and many clipped forms become standard.

4. Acronyms and initialisms

Both are made from the initial letters of a phrase. The difference is in pronunciation.

• An acronym is pronounced as a word: NASA, UNESCO, ASEAN, AIDS. Some acronyms are now ordinary lowercase words whose origin is forgotten: scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), radar, laser.
• An initialism is pronounced letter by letter: FBI, NBI, LET, TOR. The test is the sound, not the spelling: CHED is said as a word, so it is an acronym, while NBI is spelled out, so it is an initialism.

5. Back-formation and conversion

Back-formation works backwards. Speakers see a word that looks derived, remove what seems to be the affix, and so create a shorter word that never existed before. Editor came before the verb edit; television before televise; donation before donate; babysitter before babysit; burglar before burgle. The test is history: in back-formation the longer word is older.

Conversion, also called zero derivation or functional shift, changes a word's class without adding anything. Nouns become verbs (a text → to text, Google → to google, a bottle → to bottle), verbs become nouns (to run → a run, to guess → a guess), and adjectives become verbs (empty → to empty). Conversion is extremely common in English because English has so little inflection.

6. Coinage, borrowing and eponyms

• Coinage invents a word, often a brand name that becomes a general word: Kleenex, Xerox, Colgate (for any toothpaste in the Philippines), Frigidaire.
• Borrowing takes a word from another language: piano (Italian), ballet (French), kindergarten (German), tsunami (Japanese), and from Philippine languages boondocks (Tagalog bundok) and yo-yo, and in Philippine English barkada.
• A calque or loan translation borrows the meaning part by part: English skyscraper became French gratte-ciel ('scrape-sky'), and French marché aux puces became English flea market.
• An eponym is a word from a person's or place's name: sandwich (the Earl of Sandwich), boycott (Captain Boycott), volt (Volta), denim (de Nîmes).
• Reduplication repeats all or part of a word: bye-bye, zigzag, hip-hop. It is far more productive in Tagalog (araw-araw, sulat → susulat) than in English.

7. Philippine English

Philippine English uses the same processes to make words for local needs, and many are now listed in major dictionaries:

• Derivation: presidentiable (a likely presidential candidate), senatoriable.
• Blending: carnap and carnapping (car + kidnap), Taglish.
• Compounding: balikbayan box, comfort room.
• Clipping: aircon (air conditioner), presscon (press conference).
• Initialism: CR (comfort room).

These are not errors. They are regular English word formation applied to Philippine life, and teachers should be able to name the process behind each one.

Summary

• Derivation adds affixes; compounding joins whole words, with the head on the right and stress on the first element.
• Blending joins parts of two words; clipping shortens one word.
• Acronyms are said as words; initialisms are said letter by letter.
• Back-formation removes a supposed affix; conversion changes class with no change in form.
• Coinage invents, borrowing takes from other languages, calques translate part by part, eponyms come from names, reduplication repeats.
• Philippine English applies the same processes to local needs.