4.6 Blending

Blending is a word-forming process where a new lexeme is produced by combining the shortened forms of two or more words in such a way that their constituent parts are identifiable. The meaning is also a blend of two or more components. For example, harmolodic is a combination of harmonic and melodic. Other blends are comsat (communications + satellite), simulcast (simultaneous + broadcast), slurb (slum + suburban), druther (would + rather), and others. Additionally, refudiate, (refute + repudiate) was recently added to the New Oxford American Dictionary (2010). Some of these blends are coined for an occasion, as a political event; for example, Watergate is a hotel/office complex where a political scandal occurred, and later similar words were coined to denote certain types of scandals, e.g., Koreagate, oilgate, and computergate. Some of these combining forms come out of activity; for example,- thon means any long and uninterrupted activity, and it came from marathon. Later new words were coined, such as begathons, danceathons, telethons, walkathons, workathons, phoneathons, and others. The exercise vogue produced the following blends: dancercise (dance + exercise), jazzercise (jazz + exercise), aerobicise (aerobic + exercise), aquacise (aqua + exercise), and others. Some combining forms appear out of the fever of fashion, such as –oholic and –aholic (a person addicted to or obsessed with), which generate the blends workaholic, shopaholic, chocoholic, melancholic, bookaholic, danceaholic, textaholic, and others. Some blends will disappear from use. Blends tend to be more frequent in informal style; however, they may be used in advertising and technical fields as well.

4.7 Backformation

Backformation is coining a new word from an older word which is mistakenly taken as its derivative. It is “a process that creates a new word by removing a real or supposed affix from another word in a language” (O’Grady, Archibald, Aronoff, & Rees-Miller, 1993, p.127). For example, resurrect was formed from resurrection. Other backformations include accrete from accretion, adolesce from adolescence, attrit from attrition, babysit from babysitter, beg from beggar, bulldoze from bulldozer, choate from inchoate, commentate from commentator, enthuse from enthusiasm, evaluate from evaluation, haze from hazy, and others. Words ending in –or, ar, or -er are susceptible to backformation. Because such words as teacher, singer, and others are the result of affixation, then other words such as editor, burglar, peddler, respirator, and swindler are believed to be built the same way, resulting in creation of the verbs edit, burgle, peddle, respirate, and swindle. Many verbs are formed from abstract nouns ending in –ion: absciss from abscission, accrete from accretion, and ablute from ablution. The oldest backformation in American English is locate, which came into being in the seventeenth century. After the Civil war, out of the word commutation a new word, commute, was coined to indicate a regular railroad travel to and from the city. Several other words such as housekeep, burgle, enthuse, donate, injunct, and jell were created. The British English also used backformation by changing an –ation noun to –ate verb: create from creation, deviate from deviation, delineate from delineation, placate from placation, and ruminate from rumination. Backformation continues to produce new words. Some are formed because there is a real need, but some of them are just playful formations. These words are fully adopted into the language, and few persons who use them are aware of their origin.