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WORDS AND WORD- FORMATION PROCESSES

COINAGE
It is a word- formation process which creates completely new words to name commercial
products becoming general terms, usually without using capital letters.
Examples: aspirin, nylon, vaseline, zipper, kleenex, teflon, tylenol, xerox.

New words which are based on the name of a person or aplace are called eponyms.
Examples: Fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit), volt (from the Italian,
Alessandro Volta).

BORROWING.
This is a process which consists in the taking over of words from other languages.
Examples: piano (Italian), sofa (Arabic), tattoo (Tahitian), zebra (Bantu), yogurt (Turkish).

LOAN TRANSLATION / CALQUE
It is a special type of borrowing; in this process, there is a direct translation of the elements
of a word into the borrowing language.
Example: the literal translation into Spanish of the words hot dogs: perros calientes.

COMPOUNDING
It is a word- formation process which creates new words by joining two separate words.
Examples: waste + basket wastebasket, book + case bookcase, finger + print
fingerprint, sun + burn sunburn. [These examples are nouns]
Examples: fast + food fast-food, full + time full-time [These examples are compounds
of adjectives (adjective + noun)].
Examples: good + looking good-looking, low + paid low- paid [These are compound
adjectives (adjective + verb)]
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BLENDING
It is a word-formation process which creates a new word by joining the beginning of a word
to the end of another word.
Examples: breakfast + lunch= brunch, Spanish + English= Spanglish.

CLIPPING
This is a word-formation process which reduces a word to a shorter form without change in
meaning. This process usually happens in casual speech.
Examples: Facsimile= fax, gasoline= gas, Chemistry= Chem.

BACKFORMATION
This is a reduction process which consists in reducing one word and changing its type
(usually from noun to verb).
Examples: Donation (n) donate (v), worker (n) work (v).

CONVERSION / CATEGORY CHANGE, FUNCTIONAL SHIFT
This is a process which consists in changing the function of a word.
Examples:
Bottle (noun to verb): We bottled the home- brew last night.
Chair (noun to verb): Someone has to chair the meeting.

ACRONYMS
They are new words created by using the initial letters of a set of words.
Examples:
ISSSTE= Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado.
VCR= Video Cassette Recorder.
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NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

DERIVATION
A word- formation process which creates new words by attaching prefixes of suffixes to
words.
Examples:
Joy joyful, happy unhappy, judge prejudge.

PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES
We can see that some affixes have to be added to the beginning of the word. These are
called PREFIXES. SUFFIXES are added at the end of the word.
Examples of words with PREFIXES: misbehave, unfair, atypical.
Examples of words with SUFFIXES: comfortable, military, kingdom.

INFIXES
They are affixes that are incorporated inside another word.
Examples: Hallebloodylujah!, Absogoddamlutely!, these words are used in fortuitous or
aggravating circumstances by emotionally speakers.