Word formation


In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define as a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form. See 'conversion'.

Types

There are a number of methods of word formation.

Borrowing

Derivations

Compounding

Blending

A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two words after clipping. An example is smog, which comes from smoke and fog, or brunch, which comes from 'breakfast' and 'lunch'.
One subcategory of blending is the reduction of a word to one of its parts, e.g., fax, flu and bot. Such clipped words may not retain their original meaning. For example, "playing a video game against a bot" is not the same as "playing a video game against a robot".

Acronym

Calque

A calque is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation. For example, the English phrase to lose face is a calque from the Chinese "丟臉/丢脸".
A subcategory of calques is the semantic loan, that is, the extension of the meaning of a word to include new, foreign meanings.

Neologism

A neologism is a process of forming a new word by coining such as quark.
Subcategories of neologisms include: