Download Apart from conversion of word class, we have also come across a

UNIVERSITY OF MONTENEGRO
Faculty of Philosophy
English Department
Diploma Paper
English Neologisms: A Morphological Analysis
Mentor:
Student:
Prof. dr Slavica Perović
Stefan Bulatović
Nikšić, 2009
CONTENTS:
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….2
2. Terminology ………………….……………………………………………………………...…2
 2.1. Neologism ………………………………………………………..….…………….…....2
 2.2. Nonce-formation ……………………………………………………...…………..…….3
 2.3. Institutionalization ………………………………...…………………………………….4
 2.4. Lexicalization ………………..………………………………………………………….4
3. Sources of new words ………………………………………………………………….……….4
 3.1. Creation ……………………………………………………………………………...….5
 3.2. Borrowing ………………………………………………………..…………….……….6
 3.3. Combining ……………………………………………………….…………….….…….7
 3.3.1. Derivation ……………………………...……………………………….….………….7
 3.3.2. Compounding ………………………...……………………………………………….9
 3.4. Blending ……………………………………………………………………………….11
 3.5. Clipping ………………………………………………………………….…………….16
 3.6. Acronymy ………………………………………………………………..…………….17
 3.7. Conversion …………………………………………………………………………….20
 3.7.1. Noun to verb conversion ……...………………………………………..……………21
 3.7.2. Verb to noun conversion …………...…………………………..……………………23
4. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………….24
5. Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………….……….25
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1. Introduction
Linguists have always been fascinated by neologisms. It is not only because of the
unpredictability of new formations, but also due to the creativity of speakers themselves. Despite
being quite difficult to track, new coinages catch on very quickly and reflect the speaker’s
cognitive perception of the world. However, new words are not coined just for the sake of lexical
innovation, but they are also an indicator of the latest historical, cultural and social changes.
The aim of this paper is to analyse English neologisms from a morphological point of view,
particularly with regard to word-formation processes. Furthermore, this paper will elaborate the
distinction between neologisms and words created for a specific purpose such as nonce
formations and provide a theoretical background for such a dichotomy. In addition, we shall refer
to several authors specializing in this field, namely Algeo (1993), Bauer (1983) and Crystal
(1995). The corpus we studied in the quest for new words includes British and US dailies, as well
as several other English-language media.
2. Terminology
There has been much controversy among linguists regarding the classification of new coinages.
Although a plethora of new words are created on a daily basis in contemporary English, only a
small number of them become a permanent part of the vocabulary of this language. New coinages
in the field of science and technology seem to establish more rapidly and frequently in a language
than items found in literary works, newspaper articles and advertisements. In this chapter, we
shall try to clarify the terminological ambiguity that has arisen with respect to lexical innovation.
2.1. Neologism
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a neologism as ‘a new word or expression; innovation in
language’. A more specific and by all means more linguistic definition would be that a neologism
is “any word or set expression formed according to the productive word formation rules in
2
English”1. New words may also be coined on the basis of the structural pattern of another
language (calques) or they are borrowed from another language (loans).
When a word first enters a language, it is felt by speakers as something new and innovative.
Sometimes, it is not just the new form that has been created, but this innovation may also emerge
in a new use of an already existing word (e.g. cool, meaning ‘fashionable or attractive’, awesome
meaning ‘extremely good’). Upon being used for the first time, a word soon gets either
assimilated by the speakers and becomes a permanent part of vocabulary or drops out of use.
Whether a word is accepted by the language community is conditioned to a great extent by
pragmatic factors such as co-text, as well as extra-linguistic context.
2.2 Nonce formation
In linguistic literature, a major distinction is made between neologisms and nonce formations.
Bauer (1983) defines a nonce formation as “a new complex word coined by a speaker/writer on
the spur of the moment to cover some immediate need”2. In other words, a nonce formation is a
word coined ad hoc and according to the productive rules of word formation to meet the need of
a particular communicative situation. Some scholars (Lipka, 2002) use the term non-established
lexemes instead of nonce formations, since these words are not likely to become a permanent part
of the lexicon. For example, the adjective show-businessy is a nonce formation being used in the
sentence The atmosphere at the ceremony was pretty show-businessy; eelionnaire is another
example of nonce formation denoting ‘a person who has made millions selling eels’. In addition,
there is a special kind of nonce formation called stunt word, an expression coined just to show the
author’s wit and humour, or to gain a certain effect. These items are not in use in spoken or
written discourse either, but they rather refer to objects and concepts for which there is no an
appropriate term in English. Crystal (1995) lists several stunt words such as footbrawl (a blend of
foot and brawl), denoting physical violence associated with football, illitterate meaning ‘not
caring about litter’, or polygrouch, said of a person complaining about everything. Plag (2003)
identifies a special kind of nonce formations and labels them as hapax legomena. A harpax
legomenon is a word that appears only once in a corpus. It is an ad hoc coinage often found in
1
2
Jelisaveta Milojević, The Dictionary of English Morphology Terms, Belgrade: Papirus, 2001, p. 58.
Laurie Bauer, English Word-Formation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 45.
3
poetry and advertisements, such as absorbable or addressable. He gives prominence to these
formations since they can serve as an indicator of productivity.
2.3. Institutionalization
Nonce formations, as well as stunt words, may find their way into the language. Bauer
categorizes this process as institutionalization. At this stage, a potential ambiguity that nonce
formations may pose is completely ignored. For example, the nonce formation coffee-maker is
potentially ambiguous because it can refer to 'somebody whose job is to make coffee or to ‘a
gadget for making coffee’. This word has been institutionalized in its latter meaning (i.e. became
the permanent part of vocabulary), so that it has gone from being type familiar (transparent in its
word-formation pattern) to being item familiar (it is not just the pattern which is recognized but
the particular lexeme). In addition, Bauer states that institutionalization applies not only to the
formation of new lexemes by word formation, but also to the extension of existing lexemes by a
metaphor. An example of such an occurrence would be the word fox, which is nowadays used to
refer to a sexually attractive woman.
2.4. Lexicalization
The last stage in the history of a lexeme is lexicalization. According to Bauer, a word is
lexicalized if it is no longer transparent, or more precisely, when a word no longer appears to be
the result of a productive word-formation process. Although many opaque lexemes (i.e. which
cannot be analysed into constituent morphs) are lexicalized, opacity is not necessarily a
prerequisite for lexicalization. Such is the case with the word warmth, which can be broken down
into the base warm and suffix -th, but in spite of its analyzability, the word has been lexicalized.
The same stands for the suffix -hood, which does not appear to be productive, so that
neighborhood needs to be lexicalized.
3. Sources of new words
So far we have seen that when a word is used for the first time it has the status of a nonce
formation. New words are not usually recorded in general dictionaries, but there are specific
dictionaries of neologisms. One of the most distinguished dictionaries of neologisms is John
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Algeo’s Fifty Years among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms. In the introduction to
this dictionary, Algeo lists seven basic sources of new words: creating, borrowing, combining,
blending, clipping, acronymy and conversion (shifting), with some of them having their subtypes.
We will base our analysis upon this study, providing examples taken from the Oxford Dictionary
of New Words and Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary respectively, along with new words
that we have recently spotted and which we found most appealing and eye-catching.
3.1. Creating
A number of words in the English language are made out of nothing - not using any of the
existing word-formation patterns. This process is called creating, and generally it is not
considered as a word-formation process in the mainstream linguistic literature. One of the reasons
for this might be the fact that creating the least productive of all morphological processes, since
most words are coined out of old ones. However, there are a few neologisms that are seen as a
product of creating.
One of the recent examples of creating is the word chad, which represents a small piece that is
removed when a hole is made in a piece of paper, card or similar material. Chads are typically
used in connection with punched cards and tapes. Although the word originally dates back to
1944, it was during the American Presidential Elections in November 2000 that chads gained
currency. There has been a lot of discussion about chads from the punched ballot papers in the
process of counting and recounting of ballots in the state of Florida. Some chads were not
completely detached from the ballot papers because the voters did not fully punch through the
paper when registering their vote. These are known as ‘swinging’, ‘hanging’ or ‘tri-’ chads
(where one, two or three corners respectively were still attached). There are also ‘dimpled’ or
‘pregnant’ chads, which are not detached at all, but still they stick out from the ballot paper. As a
result, these ballot papers had to be counted manually, instead of using tabulating machines.
Furthermore, there is a special kind of creating in which the new word resembles some sound in
nature. Algeo labels those words as imitative, echoic or onomatopoeic words. A recent example
is the word gobbledygook (which imitates the sound of a turkey) – an informal term used to
describe language that is meaningless and difficult to understand. In addition, the sound-form of a
5
new word can be such in order to please its inventor. An example for such an occurence would be
KODAK.
3.2. Borrowing
Borrowing can be termed as the integration of a word from one language into another. A
borrowed word or a loan word is a word taken over from another language and modified in its
sound, written form, morphological shape and meaning to the standards of the English language.
Actually, nearly 70% of the English lexicon consists of words borrowed from other languages
(Milojević, 2001). For example, a lot of French words entered the English language as a result of
Norman invasion in 1066. Some recent examples that we have spotted include: from French: du
jour (an informal expression with a humorous connotation meaning ‘very popular or important
now’. This expression literally means ‘of the day’. It is most familiar to speakers of English from
French restaurants where you often find the phrase plat du jour (= dish of the day)), repechage
(in rowing, sailing and other sports - a race or contest in which the people who lost in one stage
of a competition can compete against each other to win a place in the next stage of the
competition), Beaujolais Nouveau (a type of red wine produced in Beaujolais region in France),
fromage frais (a low-fat desert based on curd cheese and eaten with fruit, honey, etc.) nouvelle
cuisine (new cooking), plastique (a form of explosive material); from Spanish: nacho (a popular
snack food originating from Mexico), from Russian: glasnost (the policy of freedom of
information and transparency in government activities), perestroika (a reform or restructuring,
especially of an economic system); from Italian: barista (a person, usually a coffeehouse
employee, who prepares and serves espresso-based coffee drinks); from German: waldsterben (a
type of environmental disaster in which trees and other plants die, usually as a result of
pollution).
In addition, there are a number of words whose origin is still uncertain, but which are regarded as
loan words or even folk etymologies. One of such words is chav, a derogatory term that is mainly
used in Southern England. A chav is a young person, usually without a high level of education,
who follows particular fashion. Chavs typically wear tracksuits and caps and are often involved
in anti-social behaviour such as drug abuse, street drinking and vandalism. The word is thought
6
to come from the Romani word chavo (meaning ‘a boy), which is also the origin of the Spanish
slang term chaval.
Apart from direct borrowing from other languages, there is also a special kind of borrowing
called calque or loan translation. That is a word whose structure is transferred in literal
translation into the target language, copying the morphological pattern of the original word.
Some recent examples of calques include new cuisine (beside nouvelle cousine) and cultural
history (from the German expression Kulturgeschichte).
3.3. Combining
Combining is a major source of new words. According to Algeo, this process comprises both
compounds and derivatives, which usually combine existing words or word parts. In traditional
morphology, compounding and derivation are regarded as two most important word-formation
processes, and all other morphological processes are seen as sub-categories of the two.
3.3.1. Derivation
As far as derivation is concerned, new coinages exploit the existing prefixes and suffixes, but
new affixes or new senses of old ones tend to develop. For instance, para- acquired a new
meaning as in the example paradoctor (a doctor who makes parachute calls); the same applies to
tele- in the example teledensity (the number of telephones per 100 people in a region). Some
suffixes are created by decomposing a word, such as -(o)holic, which comes from the word
alcoholic being wrongly divided into alco- and -holic. This new suffix is mainly used to refer to
addiction to something or someone, resulting in a new paradigm: shopaholic (someone who
enjoys shopping), chocoholic (a person addicted to chocolate), bookaholic (a person with an
extreme passion for books), surgiholic (someone who is obsessed with plastic surgeries),
milkaholic (a person addicted to drinking milk), etc. Some neologisms are formed from nonexisting affixes such as -flation in the examples oilflation and taxflation.
Yet, there are many new derivatives coined by means of common affixes, such as prefixes de-,
un- or suffixes -ize, -able or -cracy. Here are several examples that captured our attention:
7
thugocracy – the rule of criminals and thugs
“Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, has risked inflaming tensions in Parisian suburbs by
declaring violence this week was the result of a "thugocracy" of criminals, not social deprivation.”
(The Telegraph, 29 November 2007)
posterize – to embarrass an opponent or rival. This term is especially common in NBA discourse
and it means to embarrass an opponent’s player by slamming the ball over them while that
picture may end-up on a poster.
“On Sunday, the entire San Francisco team avoided being posterized by Barry Bonds as he crossed
home plate after he hit his 715th home run to pass Babe Ruth.”
(The Washington Post, 31 May 2006)
declutter – to remove things you do not use so that you have more space and can easily find
things when you need them. The verb declutter has been formed from the noun clutter and the
negative prefix de-. This is a common pattern which can be seen in many verbs in English, for
example in defrost, dehumanize and denationalize.
“Bingham has one client who, at 75, has just decided to declutter and entirely redecorate. ‘It was
traditional and quite tired, so she’s getting rid of the whole lot,’ she says.”
(The Times Online, 17 December 2006)
undecorate – to redecorate a house or a room usually by giving it a simpler or less clustered look.
“Tariq was enrolled at the international school owned by the Al Habtoor family. His room on his
father’s nine-bedroom estate was undecorated, and any toys were immediately swept away by the fleet
of maids who monitored his every move.”
(The Daily Mail, 13 July 2008)
8
Another striking example of modern derivation that we have spotted is the word ladette, which is
formed from the base lad and feminine derivational suffix -ette, which is used for
morphologically marked gender. A ladette is a young woman who behaves in a confident and
noisy way, and who drinks a lot of alcohol and enjoys sport or other activities that are
traditionally practiced by men. The expression is mainly used in British English and is thought to
have arisen from the Lad culture3.
“The precise definition of a ladette was never completely clear, but its key image was of Cox and Ball
raising pint glasses in an enthusiastic, celebratory manner. I've seen this photo in so many contexts: to
illustrate the rise of the ladette; the fall of the ladette; the evil of binge drinking; the crisis in male
confidence; and a causal link with the decline in traditional femininity.”
(The Guardian, 5 February 2005)
3.3.2. Compounding
The second type of combining is compounding, in which two or more bases are combined to
form a new word. Although compounding used to be the most popular way of creating new
words, nowadays it appears to be less attractive in comparison with other word-formation
processes. Nevertheless, composition is still regarded as the major morphological process and
still represents a fertile source of neologisms. The vast majority of new compounds appear to be
nouns, primarily due to pragmatic reasons.
A compound that is has become an essential part of internet vocabulary is social networking. This
noun stands for the practice of using the Internet to meet and communicate with other people,
particularly on websites where you can share photographs, music or videos. Social networking is
most commonly used with respect to internet sites such as Facebook or Myspace, which are
frequently referred to as social networking sites. Although being criticized by some people who
claim that this practice contributes to alienation of an individual, social networking is nowadays
very popular with people of all ages and helps create new online communities.
3
Lad culture (or Laddism) is a type of subculture that is generally associated with the British pop of the 1990s.
Although the word lad was traditionally used to denote a boy or a young man, in modern British usage lad has been
frequently used to describe a lively young man who is interested in drinking, sports and meeting women.
9
We remain in the IT domain, as the next example is yet another term that has arisen from that
field. In 2001, the American writer and web designer Mark Prensky coined the term digital
native, which denotes a person who has grown up with digital technologies and feels comfortable
with devices such as mobile phones or the Internet since they have never lived in a world where
computer-based systems did not exist. This expression is often contrasted with digital immigrant,
which stands for an individual who was born earlier than these technologies were invented and
who had to adapt to the digital world and its tools. However, this concept sparked controversy
among many people, since those who are referred to as digital immigrants actually conceived the
digital technology. Moreover, not all adults feel awkward using state-of-the-art technology,
regardless of the fact they had not grown up with it. Still, the term has become very popular when
referring to present-day children as they generally keep up with technological advancements far
better than adults.
“Most schoolchildren are digital natives, and even if they have their own PC at home, they really need to
have their own devices too.”
(The Independent, 31 July 2008)
Although it has had a devastating effect on people’s life throughout the world, the global
financial crisis has given a substantial contribution to the language at least. One of the words that
are nowadays often heard in the context of the economic downturn is credit crunch. This
expression refers an economic condition in which it suddenly becomes difficult and expensive to
borrow money. The term has entered media discourse as a result of credit crisis in the US
mortgage sector which specializes in lending money to low income people. Many of these people
have been unable to keep up repayments on the money that they have borrowed. Consequently,
banks have lost a great deal of money and are now less willing to lend money.
An example from the corpus:
“The credit crunch began with banks in the United States that had lent too much, too fast, offloading
the mortgages of some of the poorest families in America on to willing buyers in the financial
markets.”
(The Guardian, 5 October 2008)
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In his Dictionary of Neologisms, John Algeo divides neologistic compounds into three broad
categories:
a) Suffix-like compounds – apart from compound words made up of two independent
elements, there are also suffix-like compounds consisting of a free base and a combining
form. One of the most productive combining forms is -mania, as in the examples:
technomania (an obsession with change in technology), Euromania (enthusiasm for
European integration), Obamamania (the condition of being a very enthusiastic supporter
of the newly-elected US President Barack Obama), Pottermania (the craze Harry Potter
fans have had over the series), etc.
b) Prefix-like compounds – having initial elements such as big- self-, techno- etc. Examples
include: self-checkout (a retail system that enables a customer to enter and pay for
purchases without the aid of a cashier); self-talk (words or phrases said to oneself,
especially for therapeutic or motivational reasons).
c) Classical compounds – composed from Latin and Greek forms. Examples: hoplophobia
(the fear of weapons), neurotheology (the scientific study of what happens to brain
activity during religious or spiritual experiences).
Furthermore, Algeo also identifies the category of letter compounds, which consist of a noun or
one more letters of the alphabet. Letters usually stand for words, as in the examples e-wallet (a
computer database or online site that stores a person's name, address, and credit card data and
then enables easy retrieval of that information for online purchases, though etc), I-reporter
(CNN’s name for citizen journalists who submit their own photographs and reports about news
events). However, the letter can sometimes be a pun, as in U-drive (you drive), whereas in some
examples it appears to be iconic as with A-bike (a type of folding bicycle resembling the letter A
– invented by Sir Clive Sinclair in the United Kingdom and released on 12 July 2006).
3.4. Blending
Blending is an extremely lucrative source of new words. This word-formation process rose to
prominence in the 20th century and since then it has been making significant contributions to the
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English lexicon. A blend or portmanteau word4 may be defined as a new lexeme formed from
parts (or possibly more) other words in such a way that there is no transparent analysis into
morphs (Bauer, 1983: 234). In other words, two (or more) formerly independent words are
combined into one, usually the first part of one word and the second part of the other (ballute <
ball(oon) + (para)chute). However, there is no a general rule about fragments that make up a
blend – sometimes it appears to be a morpheme, but most frequently they are just arbitrary parts
of the original words.
Furthermore, the majority of blends are usually nonce-formations and thus they often tend not to
be listed in dictionaries. One of the reasons for this is that many blends are opaque and rather
difficult to decode unless one is familiar with the context (e.g. eellionaire - a person who has
made millions selling eels). As a result, the percentage of blends that find their place in a
dictionary is lower than that of words produced by other word-forming processes. Nevertheless,
this morphological process is very productive and neologisms coined by blending are pretty
common. Let us now take a look at several examples of blending that we find most catchy and
interesting.
One of the recently coined blends is mocktail (mock + cocktail), which stands for an alcohol-free
drink that is made from a mixture of ingredients, such as fruit juices and soda. Interestingly
enough, mocktail rhymes with cocktail and cleverly uses the word mock which means ‘a copy of
something and not the real thing’ and thus a mocktail is ‘a pretend cocktail’. Like cocktails,
mocktails often have amusing names such as Pilgrim’s Punch, Safe Sex on the Beach and Virgin
Mary. Mocktails are often served to children and anyone who prefers not to drink alcohol. A
famous non-alcoholic beverage is Shirley Temple, named after the famous child actor of the
1930s.
The word mock seems to be very productive when creating new blends. Similarly to mocktail,
speakers invented the term Mockney, which is a portmanteau of mock and Cockney. Mockney
The usage of the word portmanteau with this sense first appeared in Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking
Glass (1871), when linguistic philosopher Humpty Dumpty tried to explain to Alice the meaning of the words in the
nonsense poem Jabberwocky by saying: “‘Slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’ (...) You see it's like a portmanteau—there
are two meanings packed up into one word.”
4
12
gained currency during the late 1990s and 2000s, and is used to refer someone who deliberately
tries to talk or behave in the same way as Cockneys do, but who is not working class and does
not come from the East End of London. The celebrities who present themselves as Cockneys
include TV chef Jamie Oliver and director Guy Ritchie. In addition, Mockneys may adopt a
Cockney-like pronunciation, but they retain standard grammatical forms where the genuine
Cockney would use non-standard forms.
The next example of blending comes from the Academy-Award winning film Slumdog
Millionaire, a rags-to-riches story set in the slums of Mumbai in India and which was released in
early 2009. As a result of its global success and media exposure, the film has brought the term
slumdog into popular usage. This informal expression refers to a person, especially a young
person or child, who lives in a very poor area of a city (= a slum) where there is extreme poverty
and living conditions are particularly bad, with poor sanitation and shabby houses. The title of the
film provoked some controversy, especially in India, where some people were offended by the
suggestion that people from the slums are no better than dogs. However, screenwriter Simon
Beaufoy explained that the term was not coined as an insult but as a metaphor.
Though slums exist in many parts of the world, evidence of use seems to suggest that slumdog is
so far confined to India, referring to the inhabitants of slums in the country's big cities. Here is an
example from our corpus:
“The truth is that we know little of slumdogs, and even less of palace rats. The purists, however, only
wag their fingers when it comes to the depiction of poverty, never that of riches”.
(The Times of India, 28 February 2009).
Furthermore, there is some evidence that the expression is starting to be used in other contexts, at
least in India. On 1st February 2009, The Indiatime asked about the first Indian to set foot on the
moon: “Will this person be a slumdog or a celebrity?” On 19th February, the Mid-day website
reported on India’s success in hockey at the Special Olympics World Winter Games as “Slumdog
heroes bring Olympic gold”.
13
Another extremely appealing blend which gained prominence during the global financial crisis is
recessionista. This informal expression is used to refer to a person who is able to dress in a
fashionable way, even though they do not have a lot of money to spend on clothes. Recessionista
is a portmanteau of recession and fashionista, which was coined in the early nineties to describe
someone who is very interested in fashion. Instead of going to department stores or shopping
malls, recessionistas typically swap clothes with their friends, hire garments rather than buy them
or searches for bargains in order to save money.
“Debenhams reported a surge in sales of its own designer range - a trend put down to a new type of
shopper it called the 'recessionista', who opts for equivalents to expensive labels - recording a growth
in sales of more than 10 per cent across its Designer at Debenhams range in the past 18 weeks.
(The Daily Mail, 6 January 2009)
Among new blends that have arisen from the information technology we shall mention podcast.
Invented in 2004, a podcast is multimedia file, such as a radio programme or music video, that
can be downloaded from the Internet and played on an ipod or similar piece of equipment. It
combines the words iPod, a well-known music player, and broadcast. Podcasting usually
involves more than just copying a recorded programme from the Internet. Special software can
automatically find and download the latest podcasts to a computer as soon as they become
available. A growing number of radio stations and newspapers are now making their content
available in this way. Besides, this technology is very cheap when compared to traditional radio
and television broadcasting. As a result, even a small organization, or anybody with a website, is
now able to make programmes than can, in certain cases, reach a very big audience.
The next newly-coined blend is mancation. It combines two nouns – man and vacation and is
used to refer to an all-male group holiday. The word is believed to have been coined in 2002
when Larry Meadows5 uttered it to refer to his yearly vacation with his male friends. At a
wedding reception, Larry’s wife suggested that he and his friends should go on a golfing
vacation. Larry looked at his mates and exclaimed “mancation”. Soon, the word has gone from
5
Larry Meadows is the founder of the company Mancation!, which specializes in organizing men-only holidays.
14
being a nonce-formation to an established neologism. Another slang term associated with these
getaways for groups of men is mancursion.
A formation that follows similar word-formation pattern is staycation, a blend of stay and
vacation. This expression stands for a holiday or vacation that an individual or family spends at
home or near home. Staycations became popular in the US during the summer of 2008, when the
financial crisis and credit crunch started to affect many families who were forced to cut back on
extensive holidays. The term reached Britain in 2009, either retaining the same meaning, or used
to refer to a holiday spent in the UK rather than abroad. British holidaymakers who have opted
for staycation this year include the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who decided to spend his
summer holiday at his family house in Kirkcaldy.
“Most nations nurture a faith in the unrivalled beauty of their homeland. They can't all be right. But
that is one advantage of staycation. You can believe in the peerless splendour of the British Isles and,
as long as you don't go abroad, never be proved wrong.”
(The Guardian, 17 July 2009)
Jumbrella is another neologism that emerged in recent years. This term, a blend of jumbo and
umbrella, is used chiefly in Britain to refer to a very large umbrella or canopy, particularly one
used to cover the outdoor patio of a restaurant or pub. Here is an example from the online edition
of The Times:
“Preparing for the ban need not cost the earth. In some cases, the “smoking solution” has cost just a
few thousand pounds — the price of decking, a giant umbrella — known as a jumbrella — and some
patio heaters”.
(The Times, November 26, 2006)
The last example of blending is Britalian, which is a portmanteau of British and Italian. The
word Britalian usually refers to a person who was born in the United Kingdom but is of Italian
descent, or an Italian who has emigrated from Italy to take up permanent residence in the UK.
Less commonly, it also describes someone of Italian descent who was born elsewhere, but now
resides in Britain.
15
Britalian is also used as an adjective, but almost exclusively in relation to food. The adjective
Britalian does not usually describe a fusion of British and English cuisines, but rather the British
take on Italian cuisine, perpetuated by a host of very popular restaurant chains and supermarket
foods (pasta sauces etc). In this context Britalian often has slightly negative connotations, with
the underlying suggestion that, like Indian cuisine, genuine Italian cuisine has somehow been
adjusted to suit the British palate, paying little attention to authentic recipes and ingredients.
An example from the corpus:
“Anna is frighteningly dismissive of what she calls "Britalian" food (I quaked a little, but she so kindly
lied to me and declared me no culprit here) and although I know what she means - too much novelty,
not enough simplicity, along with fraudulent claims of authenticity - this, although it mixes the British
with the Italian, is in fact entirely authentic when you come to think of it.”
(The Guardian, 19 July 2009)
3.5. Clipping
A vast number of English neologisms are produced by the morphological process of clipping.
This word-formation process involves subtraction of one or more syllables from a word, leaving
the remaining part to stand alone (e.g. lab for laboratory, grad for graduate, ad for
advertisement). Clippings often bring about a change in register and degree of formality, as they
are most commonly used in less formal situations.
From the morphological point of view, clippings are quite unpredictable, as we may not predict
which part of the word will be dropped. Consequently, the clipped part need not be a morpheme
or a syllable structure, but it often appears to be just an arbitrary part of a word. Thus -vertisment
in advertisment is not a morpheme, nor is -uate in graduate.
New clippings that we have spotted are frequently found in informal English and slang. They
may be classified into three groups:
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a) fore-clipping (i.e. when the fore part is clipped): za for pizza, rents for parents, roids for
steroids, genarian for septuagenarian/octogenarian (meaning a very old person), etc.
b) back clipping (i.e. when the back part is clipped): celeb for celebrity, pap for paparazzi,
pressie for present, uni for university, knowbie for knowledgeable (a knowledgeable and
experienced Internet user), romcom for romantic comedy.
c) internal clipping (i.e. the internal part of the word is clipped): computer(liter)acy,
computer(liter)ate etc.
3.6. Acronymy
Acronymy is regarded as an extremely fertile source of new words. An acronym may be defined
as a word coined from the initial letters of the words which make up a phrase or expression, but
which is pronounced according to the normal rules of English orthography. The major asset of
acronyms is that speakers create them without much effort and as a result they catch on very
quickly. Although some authors (Milojević, 2001) argue that an acronym is actually an output of
the morphological process of clipping, for the purpose of this paper we will regard acronymy as
an independent word-forming process.
It is quite important to draw a distinction between acronyms and abbreviations. According to
Bauer (1983: 297), for a word to be an acronym it has to be pronounced as a regular word, not as
a succession of letters. Thus for example if VAT is pronounced as a succession of initial letters
(vi: ei ti), it is an abbreviation, but if we conform to the phonological patterns of English and
pronounce it as /vaet/, it would count as an acronym. On the other hand, Plag (2003: 163)
distinguishes between initialisms (words pronounced by naming each individual letter) and
acronyms (words pronounced by applying regular reading rules), while abbreviation is
considered as an umbrella term for such formations.
The spelling of acronyms is pretty arbitrary in terms of capitalization. Nevertheless, there is a
tendency to spell them in block capitals, which could be interpreted “as a formal device that
clearly links acronyms to its base word”.6 Still, a number of words that were diachronically
6
Ingo Plag, Word-Formation in English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 163.
17
conceived as acronyms are no longer spelt in capital letters (e.g. laser), as speakers do not
associate them anymore with words they originally used to stand for.
As we have provided a theoretical explanation for acronyms, we shall now present several newlycoined acronyms that particularly captured our attention. One of the most appealing acronyms
that we have spotted is the word kipper. This noun denotes an adult son or daughter, especially
one aged 30 or more, who still lives with their parents, usually because they do not have enough
money to start their own home. The word kipper comes from the first letters of words ‘kids in
parents' pockets eroding retirement savings’ and it was invented in a piece of research done for an
insurance company in the UK:
“More than a third of parents make financial sacrifices to cope with the cost of feeding, clothing and
caring for the growing generation of Kippers - or 'Kids In Parents' Pockets Eroding Retirement
Savings' - according to recent statistics from BBC2's The Money Programme.”
(The Daily Mail, 7 November 2005)
A recently coined acronym that presents a quite different picture of the modern family from
Kipper is SKI, which stands for ‘Spending Kids' Inheritance’. This acronym refers to an
increasing number of older people spending their money on travel, new cars and hobbies, not
leaving much for their children when they die. Such practice contrasts strongly with previous
generations of parents who tended to leave that money to their heirs.
“Others — the Ski (spending the kids’ inheritance) set — are simply dispensing with the concept of
leaving an inheritance altogether, or choosing to offer a “living” inheritance to their offspring in the
form of help with school fees or buying a house while they are still alive.”
(The Times, 9 September 2006)
WAG, which stands for ‘wife and girlfriend’, is another new acronym that sparked our interest.
This expression refers to wives and girlfriends of high-profile footballers, particularly those of
English national football team. Although it was coined in 2004, the term gained currency during
the 2006 World Cup in Germany, when the media gave extensive coverage to leisure activities of
English WAGs. This acronym is used in a humorous and, to an extent, derogatory sense to
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describe extravagant lifestyles of these women, who indulge in shopping sprees and throw lavish
parties afforded primarily by enormous salaries of their husbands. In addition, this word is
increasingly used to refer to wives (and girlfriends) of other sportsmen such as cricketers and
tennis players, but also to wives of political leaders, particularly those participating in G8
summits.
“Another August, another Premiership football season. This is a subject we thought Fashion Statement
would never cover, but actually we're quite looking forward to seeing the Wags - Coleen, Victoria,
Whatserface, Thingummy - again this Saturday.”
(The Guardian, 13 August 2009)
In order to make gender balance, WAGs soon got its male counterpart – HUBs which, naturally
stands for ‘husbands and boyfriends’. Although not being popular as Wags, this term is mainly
used to refer to husbands and boyfriends of high-profile sportswomen, especially professional
tennis players.
A similar spin-off commonly found in the UK media is WOW, an acronym of ‘Wives of
Wimbledon’, which is pronounced like the exclamation ‘Wow!’ and refers to the female partners
of top-ranking players taking part in the Wimbledon tennis championships.
The next example is ASBO, which refers to the growing number of the anti-social acts committed
in the United Kingdom. ASBO, which stands for anti-social behaviour order, is a court order
which aims to protect the public from people’s harmful or annoying behaviour, such as making
too much noise, or drinking or begging in the street. ASBOs were introduced in England and
Wales as part of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, but they came into wide use only recently.
According to this regulation, people can be forbidden from going to certain places, or told to stop
behaving in certain ways. If they breach the ASBO, then they might be sent to prison.
An example from the corpus:
“John Norman, 61, regularly played Springsteen's album Born in the USA on loop into the early hours.
In May last year, after 112 complaints, he was given an Asbo, which banned him from acting in a
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manner likely to cause nuisance, harassment or alarm to the neighbours, Robert Papp-Burnett, 54, and
Patricia Bartrup-Jones, 63. He was also banned from harassing them verbally or physically.”
(The Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2009)
In recent years, the Internet and mobile technology have been a major source of new acronyms.
Among numerous expressions associated with IT, we shall pay particular attention to the most
prominent ones.
WAP /wæp/ is short for wireless application protocol; a technology that links devices such as
mobile phones to the Internet. It consists of rules for changing Internet information so that it can
be shown on a very small screen and is more commonly referred to as the ‘Mobile Internet’. In
addition, there still seems to be some uncertainty among non-specialists about how to pronounce
WAP – whether it should rhyme with ‘tap’ or ‘top’. However, experts in this field as well as some
linguists agree that it should be that it is pronounced to rhyme with 'tap'.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a method of reducing the size of computer files that
contain images so that they can be sent quickly by email or over the Internet. JPEG is the most
common image format used by digital cameras and other photographic image capture devices. It
is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the Internet.
These format variations are often not distinguished, and are simply called JPEG.
Similar to JPEG is MPEG /empeg/, which is short for ‘Moving Picture Experts Group’. This
expression denotes a technology which reduces the size of files that contain video images or
sounds. Recently, MPEG has acquired the meaning of a type of computer file used on the Internet
that contains sound and video material.
3.7. Conversion
Another extremely rich source of new words is conversion. As the name suggests, conversion is a
process whereby a lexeme changes its word class without the addition of an affix. In other words,
conversion brings about the change of part of speech, whereas the word form remains the same.
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There has been certain disagreement in linguistic literature over the status of this word-formation
process. Some linguists treat conversion as a branch of derivation, often referring to it as zero
derivation, while some scholars consider it as a fully-fledged morphological process which is
equal in status with derivation and compounding (Milojević, 2001).
In the analysis of our corpus, the majority of neologisms created by conversion belong to nounto-verb conversion. Less commonly, examples of verb-to noun and adjective-to noun-conversion
were spotted.
3.7.1. Noun to verb conversion
The first example of noun to verb conversion is the verb google, which has become extremely
popular and means ‘to search for something on the Internet, particularly by using the Google
search engine’.
Here are two examples from the Oxford English Dictionary:
a) You should be able to google your way to their home page.
b) I tried googling but couldn’t find anything relevant.
There is a growing tendency of simple verbs in English to develop into phrasal verbs. Despite
being quite young word, google has already developed its own phrasal verbs. Thus, not only can
one google something on the Internet, but one can also google somebody up in order to find out
their name, where they live or work. Similarly, one can also google around for something such as
a solution, advice or help. It is interesting to note that phrasal verbs stemming from google follow
the same pattern as those of the verb look. Thus, for instance, you can look up a piece of
information in a book or computer, or look around for something in an attempt to find it.
Another recent example of noun to verb conversion is to text, meaning ‘to send a written message
to someone using a mobile phone’. This term is mainly used in British English, but it has also
become popular with American speakers.
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Here are two examples to illustrate the usage:
a) Just leave your number and I’ll text you.
b) Kids seem to be texting non-stop these days.
Semantically, the verb text is similar to several other IT verbs created by means of conversion
such as to e-mail (to send an e-mail), or one that we have recently spotted - to private message (to
send a private message to someone on a social networking site, usually abbreviated to PM).
Speaking of social networking, this internet domain has been a very productive source of new
words. One of the most popular words used in social networking is to friend, which is another
remarkable example of noun to verb conversion. To friend simply means to add to invite a person
to be your friend on a social networking website. By friending someone, you allow them to have
access to your profile, pictures and list of friends. From the semantic point of view, friend is
similar to the verb befriend, which is used to refer to the activity of making friends with someone
in the real world.
“My own 16-year-old daughter, Grace, literally cried from embarrassment when I told her I was
signing up, and she begged me through her tears not to do it. When it was clear that I was serious, she
made me promise never to "friend" her. Since I didn't know what that meant at the time, I agreed.”
(Newsweek, 4 February 2009)
Furthermore, as the language of social networking sites is developing at a fast pace, speakers
coined the antonym of the verb friend – to defriend, a derivative meaning “to remove someone
from one’s list of friends on a social networking site”. This word is formed by combining the
base friend and the reversative prefix de-, which can be found in a number of verbs with meaning
opposite of what the root signifies such as decentralize, deactivate etc. Apart from friending and
defriending, one can also refriend someone, or add someone again to the list of your friends, after
you had defriended them earlier.
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Another example of noun to verb conversion is the verb pap, which has been mentioned
previously as the clipped form of the word paparazzi. Therefore, to pap means to follow and take
photographs of famous people in order to sell them to newspapers and magazines.
When it comes to celeb dating, ex marks the spot. Chantelle and Preston announced their split
in June but have stayed mates and been papped together in Brighton just last week.
(The Sun, 15 August 2007)
3.7.2. Verb-to noun conversion
Verb to noun conversions are not as frequent as noun to verb ones, but we spotted several
interesting examples of this type. The first on our list is pull-aside, a term that grew popular in
diplomatic circles. A pull-aside is a one-to-one informal meeting between leaders or diplomats
that takes place beside the main gathering such as G8 meeting. In addition, the term is also
frequently used as a modifier in phrases such as a pull-aside meeting or pull-aside discussion,
what can be regarded as noun to adjective conversion.
The commitment of the two leaders came during a ten-minute "pull-aside" meeting at the German sea
resort of Heilligendamm as senior officials of the two countries deliberated on a fresh proposal by
India to have a dedicated safeguarded facility for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in a bid to break the
impasse.
(The Financial Express, 11 June, 2007)
Apart from conversion of word class, we have also come across a few examples of shift of
meaning. Thus the word regroup is now commonly used in the context of sport meaning to return
to a normal state after an unpleasant experience or a period of difficulty, and become ready to
make an effort again with new enthusiasm, interest or strength. On the other hand, the word Fleet
Street, a street in the centre of London where many newspapers used to have their offices, is
nowadays mainly used to refer to the British press in general.
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4. Conclusion
As we have seen throughout this paper, the English language boasts a vast number of new words
created by means of various morphological processes. The English lexicon is being enriched on a
daily basis with new lexemes that are coined to meet a particular purpose. Moreover, neologisms
are not only a reflection of the creativity of speakers, but they also serve as an indicator of current
trends in society as a whole. However, some words remain the permanent part of vocabulary as
speakers see the need to define a particular context, whereas a majority of coinages are nonceformations which do not get lexicalized since they are created on the spur of the moment.
Having regard to the above-applied analysis, we may conclude that all word-formation processes
contribute to the enrichment of English lexicon. Although derivation and compounding are
traditionally regarded as major morphological processes, we see that nowadays those processes
which are considered as the minor ones produce as many new words as derivation or
composition. Furthermore, if we are to judge according to the proportion of new words, we may
assume that blending is actually the major morphological process of word-formation, as most
new words – whether established neologisms or nonce formations – are coined by way of this
process. Nevertheless, all remaining word-formation processes also have a considerable share in
the expansion of the English lexicon, thus marking themselves off as fertile sources of lexical
innovation.
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