Neologisms

I hope you all had lovely Labor Day weekends here in the US and grand usual weekends abroad.

Just found an article about neologisms (new words) and how to make them and I’m loving it.

1. Affixation:
Over half the words in our language have been formed by adding prefixes and suffixes to root words. Recent coinages of this type include semi-celebrity, subprime, awesomeness, and facebookable.

2. Back Formation:
Reversing the process of affixation, a back-formation creates a new word by removing an affix from an already existing word, for example liaise from liaison and enthuse from enthusiasm.

3. Blending
A blend or a portmanteau word is formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two or more other words, such as bromance (a combination of brother and romance), pixel (picture and element), staycation (stay and vacation), and flirtationship (flirt and relationship).

See the other 3 here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*