NEW WORDS

Sources of New Words

It is very rare to find completely new words. An example is the trade name, Kodak, a 'designer' word which made use of the rare letter k to make it stand out. There is also the word gas, coined in the 17th century by Flemish chemist J.B. Van Helmont. It was possibly created by analogy with the Greek chaos. A more recent one is the word blurb, coined by the American humorist Gelett Burgess in 1907.

In the last century or so, more established methods have been used to create and coin new words.

Loaning is an example of an established method used to create and coin new words. As a rule, a word has to have been in the language long enough and also look and sound English.

Also, came the emergence of new "compound words". Among the recent additions to the English vocabulary are the words:

baby-sitter, body language, fingerprint, fire extinguisher, jet engine, know-how, lifestyle, lipstick, mobile home, skydiving, software, spin-off, steamroller, streamline, think tank, trouser suit, zebra crossing.

Many of them show indications of being new as they:

-are written separately or with hyphens.

-they often retain stress on both elements.

-examples: jet lag and death trap, teapot and songbird.

New prefixes and suffixes have been adopted and the older ones revived for compounding purposes. For example, the old prefix de- has been added to many newly coined verbs such as deregulate, decode and defrost. The Old English suffix -dom is also used in words like stardom, officialdom, beggardom, fandom and even hippiedom.

Other less common means of word formation are the coining of acronyms, which are words formed from the intial part of a name. This is absolutely new. Although in some cases, the connection between the acronym and unabbreviated form is maintained, people often forget the unabbreviated form. Some common examples are: WHO-World Health Organisation, radar-radio detection and ranging, scuba-self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, laser-light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

There is also the adoption of trade names as ordinary words which can be protected trademarks and should be acknowledged with a capital letter. Some examples are Dictaphone and Kleenex.

Portmanteau words (or blends) are usually conscious coinings. Such examples are chortle (chuckle and snort) and galumph (gallop and triumph).

Another interesting source of 'new' words is revival. The verb to witter only appeared in dictionaries from 1980 onwards. It is probably a very old word which was soon stopped being used in the written language, but was used in dialect and spoken language before resurfacing again.