A Brand New Word
30 12 2007
All languages make up new words as they go along. Sometimes it happens because our life style changes and we suddenly need new words. Brunch was invented because we weren’t hungry enough at breakfast but couldn’t wait till lunch. So we blended the two words. Linguistics call this process blending. Motel is also a blended word (motor+hotel). We bet blog (web+log) immediately came into your mind, didn’t it?
When we are not blending, we sometimes combine two words together. It’s called compounding. There is almost no limit to the kinds of combinations of words that occur in English: boyfriend, rainbow, landlord; newborn, undergo and sailboat are only few examples. At times of greediness we even make up three compound words, such as mother-in-law (god bless her) and sergeant-at-arms.
Shortage of time leads to shortcuts, a process known as clipping. We say gym instead of the longer gymnastics; gas instead of gasoline; bike (bicycles), pop (popular) and math is short for mathematics.
Acronyms can be viewed as other type of shortcuts. They are words which derive from the initials of several words put together to create a new word. Radar (Radio detecting and ranging); Laser (Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation); OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).
How does the term “onomatopoeic words” sound to you? Too long? Hard to pronounce? Quite right! (let’s clip that one…) Anyway, it means words that imitate the sound of their meaning: cuckoo( Hebrew: Kukeeya – קוקיה ), bottle (Hebrew: Bukbook- בקבוק), boom, whisper (French: chuchoter) , splash, click, buzzer (Hebrew: zumzum - זמזם) swoop, hiccup (Hebrew: sheehook - שיהוק) and the cat purrrrrrrs….
Can you guess what Fallopian tubes, boycott, July and August all have in common? They are all eponyms - words deriving from names of persons or places. A separate article will be dedicated to eponyms as there are many different types of them.
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I love your site! So glad you found mine and commented.
Onomatopoeic words have been my favorites since reading about Puff the cat in my early readers.
I learned so much from the first few posts I’ve read; I’ll be back, for sure.