Chapter 3 - Evolution of English Vocabulary

Question 1

Compounds?

Answer 1

• largest source of new words
• two words or phrases either joined together, hyphenated or stand side by side to create new meaning.
• Eg. new-born, boyfriend, spreadsheet, upmarket, road-rage, think-tank, laptop, hard-drive, Facebook

Question 2

What is a neologism?

Answer 2

• Comes from neos (new) + logos (word)
• Created without any connection to existing old words or roots
• neologisms stay new until used commonly in slang or accepted into dictionary
• Eg. dog, blizzard, jam, googol/google

Question 3

Blends?

Answer 3

• AKA portmanteau words
• Created by combining parts of two words in such a way that they both lose a portion
• Eg. motel = motor + hotel, guestimate = guess + estimate

Question 4

Acronyms?

Answer 4

• comes from acros (top) + onyma (name)
• Word formed by taking first initial or first sound of several words.
• SOUNDS like a word, NEVER punctuated
  Egs:
• RAM (Random Access Memory)
• NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)
• MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)
• AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)
• CAT scanner (Computerized Axial Tomography scanner)
• Soweto (South Western Township)
• Once an acronym becomes fully accepted as a word, its spelled with lower case letters:
  radar (radio detecting and ranging)
  sonar (sound navigation and ranging)

Question 5

Abbreviations?

Answer 5

1. Initialisms
2. Clippings

Question 6

Initialisms?

Answer 6

• Contracted form of phrase using inital letter to respesent whole word.
• pronounce letters individually
• eg. UCT (University of Cape Town), HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

Question 7

Clippings?

Answer 7

• Words created by removing a syllable or even more from a word.
  egs:
• phone from telephone
• plane from aeroplane
• taxi from taximeter cab

Question 8

Conversions?

Answer 8

• clipping off suffix of a word. Created new grammatical function
  Eg:
• escalate from escalator

Functional conversion:
- does not change in spelling or in sound but it is used in different part of speech.
Eg: a chair from “to chair a meeting”
or when noun becomes a verb (google)

Question 9

Eponyms?

Answer 9

• derived from names of people
  eg: Braille, pasteurize

Question 10

Toponyms?

Answer 10

• derive from names of places
  eg: champagne (france), jeans (Genoa)

Question 11

Affixation?

Answer 11

• use of prefixes (to change meaning) or suffixes (to change grammatical function)
  eg. in-corpor-ate

Question 12

Borrowing?

Answer 12

Borrowed from other languages both modern and ancient

eg. Hebrew: amen, rabbi
Chinese: silk, tea, ketchup

Question 13

Degeneration?

Answer 13

semantic change where word that had orginal good meaning becomes bad.

AKA pejoration

Eg. villain originally meant farm labourer. Now evil person.

Question 14

Elevation?

Answer 14

Semantic change where word that originally had bad meaning, the meaning becomes good.

Eg. Nice originally meants ignorant

Question 15

Specialisation?

Answer 15

Word shifts in meaning from general to specific.

undertaker: originally meant to undertake anything. Now specifically for funerals.

disease: orginally just discomfort, now means illness.

Question 16

Generalization?

Answer 16

Word shifts in meaning to become more general.

decimate: meant originally for destruction of 1/10 of military unit. Now means to kill or destroy a large proportion.

vaccine: pertaining to cow. Now means substance to stimulate production of antibodies and provide immunity against disease.