Word formation, also known as morphology, has already come up in the discussions about the parts of speech. The inflections of verbs, the special suffixes of nouns and verbs, and the -ly suffix for most adverbs are all matters of word formation. It is the study of morphemes—the component parts of words. For example, un-mis-giv-ing-ly contains five morphemes: two prefixes, a base word or stem (give), and two suffixes. One of morphology’s major aims is studying how specific morphemes, and changes in morphemes, express grammatical categories and relationships, such as part of speech, case, number, and tense. This subfield is called inflectional morphology, or accidence.
A morpheme is a short word segment that meets three tests: (1) it’s a word or word part that conveys meaning; (2) it can’t be divided into smaller meaningful segments without losing its meaning or leaving meaningless remainders; and (3) it retains a fairly stable meaning regardless of the context in which it appears.
Consider as an example the word strength. First, it’s a word that is listed in every English-language dictionary. Second, it can’t be divided into smaller units that would have independent meanings. Third, it has a fairly stable meaning whether in reference to someone’s physical prowess, someone’s moral fiber or courage, the sturdiness of a metal, or the volume of a sound. Literally or metaphorically, the word conveys a fairly consistent set of analogous senses.
Take another example: the differences between cheap, cheapen, and cheapened. Cheap is one morpheme; cheapen consists of two (cheap + -en); cheapened consists of three (cheap + -en + -ed). To cheapen is to make something cheap: -en carries the sense “to make.” This morpheme occurs also in such words as brighten, darken, enlighten, soften, and stiffen. Hence -en is a morpheme. So is -ed, the past-tense morpheme for countless regular verbs.
Morphemes are either free or bound. A free morpheme can be uttered meaningfully by itself. Simple words such as itch and look and speak are free morphemes. But a bound morpheme cannot be uttered by itself: it must be attached to one or more other morphemes to form a word. You would never say -er, -ly, -non, pre-, re-, or un- in isolation. Some words consist entirely of bound morphemes, examples being combine, eject, internal, manual, modify, semblance, tenacious, and uxorial.
Morphemes can also be classed as either stems or affixes. A stem, essentially, is the morpheme that carries the central meaning within a word {likable} {relist} {readability} {unmistakable}. Although most stems in English are free morphemes, some are not (e.g., the dent- in dental, dentist, denture, and dentition). These are called bound stems.
An affix is a bound morpheme appearing before or after a stem. English uses two types of affixes: prefixes, which occur before the stem {abnormal} {antithesis} {consent} {impersonate} {preview}; and suffixes, which occur after the stem {spillage} {licensure} {threads} {immortalize} {viewed}. Although prefixes are normally single or double in a given word—double especially when un- is one of the two {unexpected} {undissolved}—suffixes may come in threes and fours {atomizers [3]} {personalities [3]} {normalizers [4]}. The long word antidisestablishmentarianism has three prefixes (anti-, dis-, es-) and three suffixes (-ment, -arian, -ism). Forming a word by adding an affix to another word is called derivation.
Some languages, such as Austronesian languages, use infixes, a third type of affix inserted within a stem itself. (Prefixes and suffixes, which attach before or after a stem, are collectively called adfixes by contrast.) Rare examples of English infixes do occur in slang. For example, -ma- can imply ironic pseudosophistication {edumacation}, and -iz- appears in hip-hop slang {hizouse} (though this doesn’t affect the word’s meaning). Some technical terminology, such as chemical nomenclature, also uses infixes.
A similar process, called tmesis, sometimes occurs in colloquial English, whereby a speaker inserts a word (typically profanity) between the parts of a compound or other polysyllabic word for emphasis {fan-freaking-tastic} {when-the-hell-ever} {a-whole-nother}. But since these are whole words, not bound morphemes, they aren’t true infixes. And though some grammarians consider all but the last suffix in a string to be infixes (e.g., -ify and -er in pacifiers or -ize in colonization), a true infix must appear within a word stem. Hence true infixes in Standard English are virtually nonexistent.
418 Inflectional and derivational suffixes.
An inflectional suffix attaches to a word to mark it as a particular part of speech. There are eight of them:
(1) the noun plural -s {cats};
(2) the noun possessive -’s {cat’s};
(3) the present-tense verb’s third-person-singular -s {permeates};
(4) the present-participial -ing {permeating};
(5) the past-tense verb’s -ed {permeated};
(6) the past-participial -en {eaten};
(7) the comparative -er {smarter}; and
(8) the superlative -est {smartest}.
All others are derivational suffixes, and they typically have three characteristics. First, they don’t close off a word—hence you can often add another derivational suffix, so that pole becomes polar becomes polarize becomes polarization. Second, a derivational suffix usually changes the part of speech of the word to which it’s added (note how this happened in the example of pole just given). Third, the derivational affixes that get added to specific words are known to competent users of the language but are often unpredictable. To make a noun from the verb to establish, we use -ment; for to fail, we use -ure; for to act, we use -ion; and so on.
A compound differs from a complex word in that it is composed entirely of free forms: bookcase, bookshelf, bookshop, bookstall. These are primary compounds since each consists of two simple free forms. Such primary compounds differ from word-groups or phrases in (a) phonemic qualities of components; (b) juncture; or (c) stress; or by a combination of two or more of these. Thus the primary compound blackbird differs from the phrase black bird in (c); already from all ready in (b) and (c); and gentleman from gentle man in (a), (b) and (c). In describing the structure of a compound the investigator should examine (1) the relation of the members to each other; and (2) the relation of the whole compound to its members.
—Simeon Potter
Modern Linguistics
When two stems are combined to form a new word, they are said to be compounded. The stems may but don’t have to be the same part of speech. For example:
adjective–adjective: bitter + sweet → bittersweet
adjective–noun: black + board → blackboard
adjective–verb: white + wash → whitewash
noun–noun: basket + ball → basketball
noun–verb: tooth + pick → toothpick (though pick can also be a noun)
preposition–preposition: in + to → into
preposition–verb: out + run → outrun
verb–adverb: stand + still → standstill
verb–noun: work + room → workroom
verb–preposition: run + down → rundown
verb–verb: stir + fry → stirfry
A compositional compound is one whose meaning comes from the meanings of its parts. For example, redbird denotes a bird that is red, and lawbook denotes a book about law. (The process of making such compounds is called agglutination.) A noncompositional compound has a meaning that is different from those of its parts. For example, breakdown has never meant “a fracture in a downward direction.”
The process of conversion occurs whenever a word is changed from one part of speech to another {we watched tomatoes being canned} {we pickled some pears} {that was a fine throw}. There are two types of conversion: complete and partial. In complete conversion, the word can take all the prefixes and suffixes used for a particular part of speech. A completely converted word has all the characteristics of the part of speech that it functions as and none of any other. For example, when slow is used as a verb, it can take suffixes to change the tense: slow–slowed–slowed. And when it’s an adjective, it can take suffixes to show comparison: slow–slower–slowest. In partial conversion, a word functioning as a different part of speech won’t take some characteristics (such as affixes) or function as only one part of speech. For instance, boy may be an adjective or a noun at the same time {boy king [the king is very young; the boy is a king]}.
For more on noun conversions, see §§ 41–44; for more on adjective conversions, see §§ 133–36.
Many words are truncated forms of longer words. Speakers of English are notoriously parsimonious with their syllables—hence they will lop off the beginning of a word (bus comes from omnibus, copter from helicopter, plane from airplane); the end of a word or phrase (coed comes from coeducational student, co-op from cooperative, comp from composition, math from mathematics); and sometimes both the beginning and the end of a word (flu comes from influenza, fridge from refrigerator).
There are technical terms denoting the processes resulting in clipped forms. If the initial syllable or syllables are dropped {phone}, it’s called aphaeresis. If the middle of a word is dropped {ne’er} {apothegm [from apophthegm—an epigram or aphorism]}, it’s called syncope or hyphaeresis. If the end of a word is dropped {ad} {oft}, it’s called apocope. The sounds are typically lost because they are unstressed in speech. Compounds may also have clipped forms (compound-clipping). Part of one or each word may be dropped (pop music from popular music), and the result may form one word (navicert from navigation certificate, sitcom from situation comedy).
Clippings typically begin as slang within special groups that are so familiar with a word that hearing only part of it is sufficient to get the whole meaning. For example, a business plans to run an ad {advertisement}, a doctor performs a physical exam {examination}, and a paratrooper packs a chute {parachute}. If clippings are adopted by the general public, they become part of standard language; otherwise, they remain group-specific slang.
Sometimes words get lengthened, usually unnecessarily. Hence preventive often becomes *preventative—the addition of the extra syllable in the middle of a word being called epenthesis. There are many common forms of epenthesis in dialectal English. One is the addition of a consonant, such as r, to separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables {drawing becomes /draw-ring/ or to lengthen a sound {wash becomes /warsh/}. Another is the addition of a consonant with a labial sound, such as p or b, before one with an alveolar {something becomes /somepthing/} {family becomes /fambly/}. Or a vowel may be inserted between consonants {athlete becomes /athalete/} {realtor becomes /realator/}.
Another type of elongation occurs with back-formed words, in which a longer form of a verb is created from a cognate noun. Hence *administrate is a back-formation (or denominal verb) from the noun administration—the verb administer being standard. Other examples are *cohabitate, *delimitate, *filtrate, *interpretate, *revolute, *solicitate.
Still another type of elongation occurs with slangy infixes—discussed previously as tmesis in § 417.
Many two-part words consist of repeated syllables, rhyming syllables, or syllables that sound like an earlier one but with a change in vowel or in an initial consonant. Many are solid:
boohoo
flimflam
froufrou
hobnob
hodgepodge
humdrum
knickknack
kowtow
powwow
riffraff
zigzag
Others are treated as hyphenated compounds or even unhyphenated phrases:
boo-boo
boogie-woogie
helter-skelter
hocus pocus
hurly-burly
jiggery-pokery
pooh-pooh
willy-nilly
A loan translation, or calque, is a word formed by translating the elements of a foreign word to produce a word consisting of native elements—the word’s meaning generally corresponding closely to that of the foreign word. Hence masterpiece seems to have been formed in the 18th century to correspond either to the Dutch word meesterstuk or to the German word Meisterstück, both meaning “a piece of work so good as to qualify a worker as a master craftsman.” Other examples are standpoint from the German Standpunkt and homesickness from Heimweh.
The two types of abbreviations known as acronyms and initialisms are similar but distinct. An acronym consists of the first letters of parts of a compound term and is treated as a single word {scuba = self-contained underwater breathing apparatus} {NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization}. Some acronyms, such as scuba, laser, and radar, eventually become words. An initialism is also made of the first letters, but each letter is sounded separately {DNA = deoxyribonucleic acid} {rpm = revolutions per minute}.
Neologisms, or newly coined words, may be introduced into the language in many ways. They may be made from people’s names {the special interests are trying to bork our nominee}, they may be portmanteau words {this family uses hangry for someone who is angry because of hunger}, they may be colorfully metaphorical {they’re all a bunch of couch potatoes}, they may take nontraditional affixes {he’s become an online shopaholic}, they may denote new technological phenomena {Dad took a selfie!}, or they may be nontraditional collocations newly taken to form a lexical unit {he’s doing some online training}. There are others. Because lexicographers monitor new entrants into the language, it’s always a good idea to consult an up-to-date, reputable dictionary. Often it can take a long time for neologisms to settle into the language and lose their newfangled feel. That is less true of technological innovations that become an everyday part of people’s lives {cellphone} {handheld device} {podcast} {webinar}.
Launching neologisms is no easy matter: reputable lexicographers won’t admit a term into their dictionaries until it has proved itself by gaining a significant degree of currency. How and why words take root in the language—or fail to—remains something of a mystery. A successful word somehow fills a need. Speakers of a language hear it and read it. If enough of them find it serviceable—and “enough” is really not very many, in real numbers—then it will be recorded in various writings, including transcripts of the spoken word. Ultimately it will be enshrined in a dictionary. But it’s a word, assuredly, long before that.