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The Evolution of Language: How Words Are Formed . . . Et y mol ogy noun, plural et·y·mol·o·gies. 1. the beginnings of a word. Synonyms: word origin, word source, origin. 2. a chronological account of the birth and development of a word, often showing its spread from one language to another and its evolving changes in form and meaning. Synonyms: word history, historical development. Etymology of “Etymology” Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English < Latin etymologia < Greek etymología, equivalent to etymológ or studying the true meanings and values of words (étymo true + lógos word) So how do words become...words? #1: They are created from scratch. Many of the new words added to the English language are just created from scratch – they just appear. A good example is the word dog. It is unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund), which had been in use for centuries. Examples: jaw, tantrum, conundrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, log, punch, freak, slang, puzzle, surf, pour, bash. #2: They are adopted or borrowed. Loanwords, or borrowings, are words which are adopted into a native language from a different source language. By the 1500s, English had already adopted words from about 50 other languages. The majority of English words today are actually foreign borrowings. #3: Prefixes and suffixes are added to root words. The ability to add affixes, whether prefixes (e.g. com-, con-, de-, ex-, inter-, pre-, pro-, re-, sub-, un-, etc) and suffixes (e.g. -al, -ence, -er, -ment, -ness, -ship, tion, -ate, -ed, -ize, -able, -ful, -ous, -ive, ly, -y, etc) makes English extremely flexible. This process, referred to as agglutination, is a simple way to completely alter or subtly revise the meanings of existing words, to create other parts of speech out of words, or to create completely new words from new roots. #4: They are truncated or clipped. Some words arise simply as shortened forms of longer words (exam, gym, lab, bus, vet, fridge, bra, pram, phone and burger). Examples also include goodbye (a shortening of God-be-with-you) and hello (a shortened form of the Old English for “whole be thou”). #5: CHILLAX: They are fused or compounded with existing words. Like many languages, English allows the formation of words by fusing together shorter words (e.g. airport, seashore, fireplace, footwear, wristwatch, landmark, flowerpot, etc). #6: They have their meanings changed. Word meanings change over time usually (but not always) due to the misuse, either deliberate or accidental, of words. It may be that over half of all words adopted into English from Latin have changed their meaning in some way over time. For example, smart originally meant sharp, cutting or painful; handsome merely meant easily-handled (and was generally derogatory); bully originally meant darling or sweetheart; sad meant full or satisfied; and insult meant to boast, brag or triumph in an insolent (SNAP!) way. #7: They are made from errors. There are at least 350 words in English dictionaries that came about that owe because of typographical errors or other misunderstandings. There are many more words, often in quite common use, that have arisen over time due to mishearings (e.g. shamefaced from the original shamefast, penthouse from pentice, sweetheart from sweetard, buttonhole from button-hold, etc). #8: They are made from sounds that imitate. Words may be formed by the deliberate imitation of sounds they describe (onomatopoeia). It is quite probable that the first human languages developed as imitations of natural sounds – the socalled "bow-wow theory”. #9: They are transferred from proper nouns. A large number of words have been created by the transfer of the proper names of people, places and things. Maverick (American cattleman, Samuel Augustus Maverick); Saxophone (Belgian instrument maker, Adolphe Sax); Sandwich (after the fourth Earl of Sandwich); Silhouette (after the French finance minister, Etienne de Silhouette); Boycott (after Charles Boycott(