WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES
In linguistics, the ways in which new words are made on the basis of other words or morphemes.
1.Derivation: The forming of new words by
combining derivational affixes or bound bases
with existing words
2. Compounding: The joining together of two
or more words, written either as one word, or
hyphenated, or as separate words
3. Invention/Coinage/Neologisms: New
words are totally invented
4.Echoism/Onomatopoeia: The use of words
(such as hiss or murmur) that imitate the
sounds associated with the objects or actions
they refer to.
5. Clipping: A word formed by dropping one
or more syllables from a polysyllabic word,
such as cell from cellular phone.
6.Acronymy/Abbreviations/Initialisms
teacher, ecosystem, direction, standardize,
illegal, pre-war, nationalization, development
airbag, home page, global warming, father-in-
law, long-haired, hand-wash, air-condition,
sky-high
Kodak, nylon, kleenex, sony
"Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong,
ding-dong. The little train rumbled over the
tracks."
("Watty Piper" [Arnold Munk], The Little
Engine That Could, 1930)
"I'm getting married in the morning!
Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime."
(Lerner and Loewe, "Get Me to the Church on
Time." My Fair Lady, 1956)
"Bang! went the pistol,
Crash! went the window
Ouch! went the son of a gun.
biz, caps, celebs, deli, exam, flu, hippo, info,
intro, lab, mayo, max, perm, photo, ref, reps,
rhino, sitcom, and vet.
Written Abbreviations
 Apr. – April
 cm – centimeter(s)
 d. – died, died in
 dept. – department
 Dr. – doctor
 Jr. – Junior
 Mr. – Mister
 oz – ounce(s)
 Sun. – Sunday
 yd – yard(s)
 A.M. – ante meridiem [in the morning]
 B.C.E. – Before Common Era
 GOP – Grand Old Party (Republican
Party)
  HIV – Human Immunodeficiency Virus
 i.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

 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
7. Blending: A word formed by merging the alcopop (alcohol + pop)
sounds and meanings of two or more other bash (bat + mash)
words or word parts. Also known as a biopic (biography + picture)
portmanteau word. breathalyzer (breath + analyzer)
camcorder (camera + recorder)
One common type of blend is a full word chexting (cheating + texting)
followed by a word part (called a splinter), as clash (clap + crash)
in motorcade (motor + cavalcade). cosmeceutical (cosmetic + pharmaceutical)
docudrama (documentary + drama)
electrocute (electricity + execute)
emoticon (emote + icon)
faction (fact + fiction)
fanzine (fan + magazine)
flare (flame + glare)
flirtationship (flirting + relationship)
glimmer (gleam + shimmer)
g (global + English)
guitarthritis (guitar + arthritis)
infotainment (information + entertainment)
moped (motor + pedal)
8. Back-formation: The process of forming a "Back formation continues to make a few
new word (a neologism) by extracting actual or contributions to the language. Television has
supposed affixes from another word; shortened given televise on the model of revise/revision,
words created from longer words. Verb: back-
form (itself a back-formation).
9.Antonomasia/Proper names/Eponyms
10. Conversion/Zero derivation: A linguistic
process that assigns an already existing word to
and donation has given donate on the model of
relate/relation. Babysitter and stage manager
have given babysit and stage manage for
obvious reasons. More remote was the
surprising lase from laser (the latter an
acronym for 'lightwave amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation'), recorded
from 1966."
(W.F. Bolton, A Living Language: The History
and Structure of English. Random House,
1982)
Antonomasia means the formation of common
noun, a verb, or an adjective from the name of
a person or place. Examples: sandwich (from
Sandwich who once spent twenty-four hours at
the gaming table with no other refreshment
than some slices of cold beef between slices of
toast)
 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
 Henry downed a pint of beer.
a new word class (part of speech) or syntactic  Melissa went to town and did a buy.
category. This process is also known as a
functional shift or zero derivation.
11. Borrowing/Borrowed words/Loanwords: Pork, beef, cuisine, typhoon, guru,
A word imported into one language from
another language. Also called a borrowed
word.
12.Reduplications: A word or lexeme (such Reduplicatives are used in a variety of
as mama) that contains two identical or very ways. Some simply imitate sounds: ding-dong,
similar parts. Also called a tautonym. bow-wow. Some suggest alternative
movements: flip-flop, ping-pong. Some are
The morphological and phonological process disparaging: dilly-dally, wishy-washy. And
of forming a compound word by repeating all some intensify meaning: teeny-weeny, tip-top.
or part of it is known as reduplication. The Reduplication is not a major means of creating
repeated element is called a reduplicant. lexemes in English, but it is perhaps the most
unusual one."
(David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia
of the English Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge
Univ. Press, 2003)