Lexical creativity : English flexibility never ceases to surprise us !

Hello there,

I have been busy for a while sitting public examinations for the zillionth time. Anyway, I would have wanted to write a blog entry about Brexit and my opinion, but I kind of lost the opportunity studying hard.

Anyway, after all this I decided to write a blog entry about lexical creativity. English has different -and funny mechanisms to create new words :

1) Blending : As you may have read in my previous article about blends and exercises about blending, this process consists of using part of a word and part of another words and mix (blend) them together. The  most common process is to take the beginning of a word and the ending of the other one. However, there are some exceptions, such as 'satnav', formed by merging to beginnings of two words.  New products and words are created through this process : 

Brexit = Britain + exit

Bregret = Britain + regret

Bremain = Britain + remain

Satnav = satellite + navigator

On some occasions, blending can be masterfully used as a way to cause laughter. Don't believe me ? Have a look at the following puns about the consequences of Brexit ? Do you recognize the two elements used in blending here ?

2) Word coinage : This process consists of inventing a new lexical item from scratch. The inventions of the words 'aspirin' or 'Google' are the result of this process. Sometimes, new inventions are eponyms, words resulting from the person contributing to the invention of the word. Examples of this are 'jacuzzi' (Candido Jacuzzi) or 'Thatcherism' (named after Margaret Thatcher).

3) Conversion : This process is basically about changing the grammatical category of a word. 'Photo' is usually a noun, but the magic of English allows sentences like 'prepare to be photoed', where 'photo' is used as a verb. The opposite thing happens with 'swim', which is usually a verb, but it can be transformed into a noun as seen in the sentence : he went to the beach to have a 'swim.'

4) Compounding : This phenomenon is produced when we join two or more words together.

This was done by Mark Zuckerberg when he invented Facebook = face + book. There are more ways to do this : we can do it with hyphens. We can join a lot of words with hyphens  as in 'animal-robot; 'Jack-of-all-trades' or 'the-girl-who-lives-next-door's' father. In addition, we can add the suffix -like (similar to) or the adjective -free to create non-existing words as in computer-like object or meat-free dinner. 

5) Affixation / derivation : This process consists of adding prefixes or suffixes to some stems to form non-sensical or non-existing words. This is a funny process : you can invent new words and be creative. Let's see this in detail :
- Prefixes : 'unsit' (stand up); 'superbook' (a very big book); 'minibottle' (a very small bottle); 'bitable' (a table consisting of two boards or with two legs); 'polyhanded' (with a lot of hands)
- Suffixes : 'feelingless' (with no feelings); 'chocolatish' (similar to chocolate); 'importantness' (another words for 'importance'), 'boldery' (bravery), 'best-sellerdom' (the quality of selling well).
- Prefixes and suffixes : 'unopenable' (something that can't be opened).

6) Shortenings / clippings : It is a very interesting process where words are reduced. 'Photo' is the clipped form of 'photograph'; 'ad', and 'advert' are clippings for 'advertisement'; 'vegs' or 'veggies' are shortenings of 'vegetables'...

7) Acronyms and initials : As you can see in my blog entry about abbreviations and initials, there are lots of example s of acronyms and initials : DJ (disc jockey); laser (light amplification system of emission or radiation); PIN (Personal Identification Number),...

8) Loanwords : They are borrowings from other languages. As you can see in my blog entry about all the languages which have influenced English, English receive influences from a great deal of languages : Italian ('piano', 'paparazzo', 'spaghetti', 'macaroni' ...); Spanish ('fiesta', 'siesta', 'burrito', ...); Latin 'matrimony', 'rapid', 'vendor', 'alumnus'...); French ('beautiful'; 'fiancé', 'ballet', 'connoisseur', 'personage'...); Greek ('polyglot'; 'philosophy', 'Philology'...); Australian ('boomerang', 'kangaroo'...); German ('kindergarten', 'hamburger'....); Hebrew ('kibbutz', 'cherub'...) 

As you have seen, English is quite an interesting language that allows you to invent and create new words to make yourself understood, so do not doubt it , keep learning English and start inventing words. At the end of the day, that's what most native speakers do ! 

P.S. Why don't you invent more words and post them in the comments? It would be really interesting to see your creations !