What is back formation of a word

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«Back-derivation» redirects here. For derivation of a logical or mathematic expression, see Formal proof. For other uses, see Onomasiology.

In etymology, back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the corresponding root word.^[1] The resulting is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray^[2] in 1889. (Oxford English Dictionary Online preserves its first use of ‘back-formation’ from 1889 in the definition of to burgle; from burglar.)^[3]

For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then back-formed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix. This segmentation of resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible because English had examples of Latin words in the form of verb and verb+-ion pairs, such as opine/opinion. These became the pattern for many more such pairs, where a verb derived from a Latin supine stem and a noun ending in ion entered the language together, such as insert/insertion, project/projection, etc.

Similar phenomena[edit]

Back-formation may be similar to the reanalyses or folk etymologies when it rests on an erroneous understanding of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular noun asset is a back-formation from the plural assets. However, assets was not originally a plural; it is a loanword from Anglo-Norman asetz (modern French assez). The -s was reanalyzed as a plural suffix.

Back-formation varies from clipping – back-formation may change the word’s class or meaning, whereas clipping creates shortened words from longer words, but does not change the class or meaning of the word.

Words can sometimes acquire new lexical categories without any derivational change in form (for example, ship (in the nautical sense) was first a noun and later was used as a verb). That process is called conversion or zero-derivation. Like back-formation, it can produce a new noun or a new verb, but it involves no back-forming.

In English[edit]

Back-formation may be particularly common in English given that many English words are borrowed from Latin, French and Greek, which together provide English a large range of common affixes. Many words with affixes have entered English, such as dismantle and dishevelled, so it may be easy to believe that these are formed from roots such as mantle (assumed to mean «to put something together») and shevelled (assumed to mean «well-dressed»), although these words have no history of existing in English.

Many words came into English by this route: pease was once a mass noun (as in «pease pudding»), but was reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic was likewise a back-formation from the field of study statistics. In Britain, the verb burgle came into use in the nineteenth century as a back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North American verb burglarize formed by suffixation).

Other examples are

• Noun «taxon», a unit of classification in taxonomy, derived from Greek taxis (arrangement)+nomia «distribution»
• Singular «sastruga», plural «sastrugi» (from Russian): new Latin-type singular «sastrugus» has been used sometimes
• Singular «syringe», from plural «syringes»; the original Greek singular is syrinx^{[citation needed]}. Similar in nature is «phalange», from plural «phalanges»; the original singular being phalanx.^{[citation needed]}.
• Singular tamale, from the plural tamales; the original Spanish singular is tamal.
• Verb «edit» from editor
• Verbs «euthanase» or «euthanize» from the noun euthanasia.

The verb translate is a back-formation from translation, which is from Latin trāns + lāt- + -tio. Lāt- is from the very irregular (suppletive) verb ferō ‘to carry.’ Trānslāt- in Latin was merely a semi-adjectival form of trānsferō meaning ‘[something] having been carried across [into a new language]’ (cf. transfer). The result of the action trānsferō textum ‘to translate a text’ was a textus trānslātus ‘a text that has been translated.’ Thus the verb in English is really from a (semi-)adjectival form in Latin.

Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange, and are often used for humorous effect. For example, gruntled (from disgruntled) is used only in humorous contexts, as when P. G. Wodehouse wrote, «I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled», or the character Turk in the American sitcom Scrubs told another character, «I don’t disdain you! It’s quite the opposite – I dain you.»^[4] As it happens, gruntle and dain are both attested much earlier, but not as antonyms of the longer forms.^[5]

Back-formations frequently begin in colloquial use and only gradually become accepted. For example, enthuse (from enthusiasm) is gaining popularity, though today it is still generally considered nonstandard.^[6]

The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffick, meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. «Maffick» is a back-formation from Mafeking, a place-name that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle. There are many other examples of back-formations in the English language.

Place names[edit]

As English place names are often British, and hence the study of Celtic scholars, back-formations have occurred in many ways over the centuries owing to English-speaking interpretations. For example, the River Chelmer in Essex is named after the town of Chelmsford (Chelmeresford) which is derived from the Saxon personal name Cēolmǣr.^[7]

In other languages[edit]

Israeli Hebrew[edit]

Back-formation in Israeli Hebrew often violates the prescriptive rules of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.^[8] For example:

1. משאבּ masháb «resource» (prescriptive form: משאב mash’áv) is a back-formation from the plural form משאבּים mashabím.^[8]
2. עקרבּ akráb «scorpion» (prescriptive form: עקרב ‘aqráv) is a back-formation from the plural form עקרבּים akrabím.^[8]

See also[edit]

• List of English back-formations
• Folk etymology
• Backronym
• Retronym
• Rebracketing or juncture loss
• Onomasiology
• Unpaired word

References[edit]

In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word (a neologism) by removing actual or supposed affixes from another word. Put simply, a back-formation is a shortened word (such as edit) created from a longer word (editor). Verb: back-form (which is itself a back-formation). Also called back-derivation.

The term back-formation was coined by Scottish lexicographer James Murray, the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until 1915.

As Huddleston and Pullum have noted, «There is nothing in the forms themselves that enables one to distinguish between affixation and back-formation: it’s a matter of historical formation of words rather than of their structure» (A Student’s Introduction To English Grammar, 2005).

Pronunciation: BAK for-MAY-shun

Examples and Observations

• singular noun pea from the older English plural pease
• the verb burgle from the older English noun burglar
• the verb diagnose from the older English noun diagnosis

«He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject.» (P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters, 1938)

«Here I was maybe forty minutes ago, sort of claustrophobed in the gap between the kickass movie world where Lila dumps the guy with the smarmy mustache and the obvious one where it just keeps getting later.»(Daniel Handler, Adverbs. Ecco, 2006)

«Stripping the in- from inchoate is known as back-formation, the same process that has given us words like peeve (from peevish), surveil (from surveillance) and enthuse (from enthusiasm). There’s a long linguistic tradition of removing parts of words that look like prefixes and suffixes to come up with ‘roots’ that weren’t there to begin with.» (Ben Zimmer, «Choate.» The New York Times, January 3, 2010)

Suffix Snipping

«Alan Prince studied a girl who . . . was delighted by her discovery that eats and cats were really eat + —s and cat + —s. She used her new suffix snipper to derive mik (mix), upstair, downstair, clo (clothes), len (lens), brefek (from brefeks, her word for breakfast), trappy (trapeze), even Santa Claw. Another child, overhearing his mother say they had booze in the house, asked what a ‘boo’ was. One seven-year-old said of a sports match, ‘I don’t care who they’re going to verse,’ from expressions like the Red Sox versus the Yankees.» (Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. HarperCollins, 1999)

«In many cases of back-formation a presumed affix is removed which is in fact not truly an affix, as in the following words where the -or, -ar, and -er are not the agentive suffix, but part of the root: orator — -er> orate, lecher + -er> lech, peddler + -er> peddle, escalator + -er> escalate, editor + -er> edit, swindle + -er> swindle, sculptor + -er> sculpt, hawker + -er> hawk. These mistakes are called back-formations. Note that some of them are colloquial or marginal, while others are fully accepted.» (Laurel J. Brinton, The Structure of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction. John Benjamins, 2000)

Back-Formation in Middle English

«[T]he weakening of the flexional endings during the early Middle English period, which made possible the derivation from verbs of a multitude of nouns, and vice-versa, was also as essential to the rise of and development of back-formation.» (Esko V. Pennanen, Contributions to the Study of Back-Formation in English, 1966)

Back-Formation in Contemporary English

«Back formation continues to make a few contributions to the language. Television has given televise on the model of revise/revision, and donation has given donate on the model of relate/relation. Babysitter and stage manager have given babysit and stage manage for obvious reasons. More remote was the surprising lase from laser (the latter an acronym for ‘lightwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’), recorded from 1966.» (W.F. Bolton, A Living Language: The History and Structure of English. Random House, 1982)

Filling a Void

«Backformations are more likely to occur with very strongly entrenched patterns and they have the effect of filling an apparent void. The process has given us common verbs such as afflict (from affliction), enthuse (from enthusiasm), laze (from lazy), liaise from liaison), aggress (from aggression), televise (from television), housekeep (from housekeeper), jell (from jelly), and many more.» (Kate Burridge, Gift of the Gob: Morsels of English Language History. HarperCollins Australia, 2011)

Usage

«[B]ack-formations are objectionable when they are merely needless variations of already existing verbs:

back-formed verb — ordinary verb
*administrate — administer
*cohabitate — cohabit
*delimitate — delimit
*interpretate — interpret
*orientate — orient
*registrate — register
*remediate — remedy
*revolute — revolt
*solicitate-solicit

Many back-formations never gain real legitimacy (e.g., *elocute, *enthuse), some are aborted early in their existence (e.g., *ebullit, *evolute), and still others are of questionable vigor (e.g., aggress, attrit, effulge, evanesce, frivol). . . .

«Still, many examples have survived respectably.» (Bryan Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2009)

Back-formation
(also
called reversion) is a term borrowed from
diachronic linguistics. It denotes the derivation of new words by
subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through
misinterpretation of their structure. The phenomenon was already
introduced in §
6.4.3 when
discussing compound verbs.

The
process is based on analogy. The words beggar,
butler, cobbler, or
typewriter
look
very much like agent nouns with the suffix -er/-or,
such
as actor
or
painter.
Their
last syllable is therefore taken for a suffix and subtracted from the
word leaving what is understood as a verbal stem. In this way the
verb butle
‘to
act or serve as a butler’ is derived by subtraction of -er
from
a supposedly verbal stem in the noun butler.
Butler (ME
buteler,
boteler from
OFr bouteillier
‘bottle
bearer’) has widened its meaning. Originally it meant ‘the
man-servant having charge of the wine’.
It
means at present ‘the chief servant of a rich household who is in
charge of other servants, receives guests and directs the serving of
meals’.

These
examples are sufficient to show how structural changes taking place
in back-formation became possible because of semantic changes that
preceded them. In the above cases these changes were favoured by
contextual environment. The change of meaning resulted in
demotivation, and this paved the way for phonic changes, i.e.
assimilation, loss of sound and the like, which in their turn led to
morphemic alternations that became meaningful. Semantic changes often
influence the morphological structure by

150

modifying
the relations between stems and derivational affixes. Structural
changes, in their turn, depend on the combined effect of demotivation
and analogy conditioned by a higher frequency of occurrence of the
pattern that serves as model. Provided all other conditions are
equal, words following less frequent structural patterns are readily
subjected to changes on the analogy of more frequent patterns.

The
very high frequency of the pattern verb
stem+-er
(or
its equivalents) is a matter of common knowledge. Nothing more
natural therefore than the prominent part this pattern plays in
back-formation. Alongside the examples already cited above are burgle
v<burglar n;
cobble
v<cobbler n;
sculpt
v<sculptor n.
This phenomenon is conveniently explained on the basis of
proportional lexical oppositions. If

teacher
₌
painter
₌
butler
teach paint x

then
x =
butle,
and
to
butle must
mean ‘to
act as butler’.

The
process of back-formation has only diachronic relevance. For
synchronic approach butler
:
: butle
is
equivalent to painter
:
: paint,
so
that the present-day speaker may not feel any difference between
these relationships. The fact that butle
is
derived from butler
through
misinterpretation is synchronically of no importance. Some modern
examples of back-formation are lase
v
—
a
verb used about the functioning of the apparatus called laser
(see p.
143),
escalate
from
escalator
on
the analogy of elevate
—
elevator.
Cf.
also
the verbs aggress,
automate,
enthuse, obsolesce and
reminisce.

Back-formation
may be also based on the analogy of inflectional forms as testified
by the singular nouns pea
and
cherry.
Pea (the
plural of which is peas
and
also pease)
is
from ME pese<OE
pise, peose<Lat pisa, pl.
of pesum.
The
ending -s
being
the most frequent mark of the plural in English, English speakers
thought that sweet
peas(e) was
a plural and turned the combination peas(e)
soup into
pea
soup. Cherry is
from OFr cerise,
and
the -se
was
dropped for exactly the same reason.

The
most productive type of back-formation in present-day English is
derivation of verbs (see p. 126)
from
compounds that have either -er
or
-ing
as
their last element. The type will be clear from the following
examples: thought-read
v<thought-reader n<thought-reading n;
air-condition
v<air-conditioner
n
<
air-conditioning
n;
turbo-supercharge
v
<
turbo-supercharger
n.
Other examples of back-formations from compounds
are the verbs baby-sit,
beachcomb, house-break, house-clean, house-keep,
red-bait, tape-record and
many others.

The
semantic relationship between the prototype and the derivative is
regular. Baby-sit,
for
example, means to act or become employed as a baby-sitter’, that is
to take care of children for short periods of time while the parents
are away from home. Similarly, beachcomb
is
‘to
live or act as a beachcomber’; the noun is a slightly ironical word
de-

151

The
degree of substantivation may be different. Alongside with complete
substantivation of the type already mentioned (the
private, the private’s, the privates), there
exists partial substantivation. In this last case a substantivised
adjective or participle denotes a group or a class
of people: the
blind, the dead, the English, the poor, the rich, the accused,
the condemned, the living, the unemployed, the wounded, the
lower-paid.

We
call these words partially substantivised, because they undergo no
morphological changes, i.e. do not acquire a new paradigm and are
only used with the definite article and a collective meaning. Besides
they keep some properties of adjectives. They can, for instance, be
modified by adverbs. E.g.: Success
is the necessary misfortune of human life, but it is only to the very
unfortunate that it comes early (Trollope).
It
was
the suspicious and realistic, I thought, who were most easy to
reassure. It
was the same in love: the extravagantly jealous sometimes needed only
a single word to be transported into absolute trust (Snow).

Besides
the substantivised adjectives denoting human beings there is a
considerable group of abstract nouns, as is well illustrated by such
grammatical terms as: the
Singular, the Plural, the Present, the Past, the Future, and
also: the
evil, the good, the impossible. For
instance: “One
should never struggle against the inevitable,” he
said (Christie)/

It
is thus evident that substantivation has been the object of much
controversy. Some of those, who do not accept substantivation of
adjectives as a variant of conversion, consider conversion as a
process limited to the formation of verbs from nouns and nouns from
verbs. But this point of view is far from being universally accepted.

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The definition of back-formation is a word created by removing a part of another word, or the process of how this new word is made. An example of back-formation is the word babysit from babysitter. The process of forming words in this way.

What are the examples of word formation?

Some examples are smog, which comes from smoke and fog, and brunch, from breakfast and lunch. Acronym is the short letters of long word,It is made up from the first letters of the words,That make up the name of something.It indicates about the long word.

Which is formation process?

Definition. Word Formation Process (also called Morphological Process) is a means by which new words are produced either by modification of existing words or by complete innovation, which in turn become a part of the language.

What are the main processes of word formation in English?

Common processes of word formation include , eponym formation, blending, backformation and agglutination. Eponym formation is the use of a proper name in a new word, typically an adjective.

Is an example of borrowing?

Borrowing is the activity of borrowing money. A borrowing is something such as a word or an idea that someone has taken from another language or from another person’s work and used in their own language or work. The names are direct borrowings from the Chinese.

What is the formation process of the word Google?

The word google is currently the most noticeable example of coinage in English. As the name of a company (Google), the word originated from a misspelling of googol, which means the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros, in the creation of the word Googleplex.

What are loan words examples?

Examples and related terms Examples of loanwords in the English language include café (from French café, which means “coffee”), bazaar (from Persian bāzār, which means “market”), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten, which literally means “children’s garden”).

What is borrowing and examples?

The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. For example, the Germanic tribes in the first few centuries A.D. adopted numerous loanwords from Latin as they adopted new products via trade with the Romans.

What is English loan word?

in the History of English. Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. They simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a different language from the one they originated in.

Which language has the most loan words?

Chinese

How many languages does English borrow from?

Loanwords make up 80% of English As lexicographer Kory Stamper explains, “English has been borrowing words from other languages since its infancy.” As many as 350 other languages are represented and their linguistic contributions actually make up about 80% of English!

What is the closest language to English?

Dutch

Is duolingo better than Babbel?

The main differences between Babbel vs Duolingo are: Babbel is best for learnings looking to completely master a language, whereas Duolingo is better for sporadic learners who want to dabble. Babbel offers lessons with conversational practice and cultural immersion, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons.

Can u learn a language while shifting?

Yes, but you have to go through the learning process to learn it. maybe even learn a new language, study for a test that you procrastinated on. Anything involved with just knowledge you can take back to your CR!

Can you learn a language by watching TV without subtitles?

The short, practical answer is that we can’t learn a language just by watching some foreign-language TV show without subtitles. We can’t learn just by listening to the radio either.

A back-formation is a new word produced by excising an affix, such as producing the verb secrete from the noun secretion. Many back-formations, like that one, acquire respectability, but others, especially more recent coinages, are considered nonstandard, so use them with caution.

Back-formation can be seen as a form of clipping, though the distinction between one category and the other is that clipped forms (ad in place of advertisement, for example) are the same part of speech as the original form, whereas most back-formations are verbs formed from nouns. (Many back-formations are formed from words ending in -tion, such as automate and deconstruct.)

Most back-formations eventually take their place among other standard terms, though they are often initially met with skepticism. For example, curate and donate, now accepted without question (and associated with the high pursuits of art and philanthropy, respectively), were once considered abominations.

Newer back-formations that careful writers are wise to avoid include attrit, conversate, enthuse, incent, liaise, spectate, and surveil. These buzzwords are convenient — hence their creation — but they are widely considered inelegant, and in the case of at least a couple of them, concise synonyms are already available. (To spectate is to watch, and to surveil is to observe.)

Sometimes, a back-formation is derived from a noun describing an action, as with attendee from attendance, or from a noun describing an actor, as with mentee from mentor. Many people consider such terms aberrant, and they are also ill advised in formal writing.

Other back-formations derive from confusion about a base word. Cherry and pea both developed from the assumption that the original terms cherise and pease are plurals. More recently, biceps (and triceps) and kudos have been misunderstood as plurals, resulting in bicep, tricep, and kudo. Although cherry and pea were accepted without reservations into English long ago, bicep, tricep, and kudo are still considered nonstandard.

Another class of back-formations are those shorn of their prefixes for humorous effect, such as gruntled from disgruntled and kempt from unkempt; rarely do such truncations enter the general lexicon.