lexical terminology Flashcards
Loan words
when words are taken from other languages. the simple reason why loan words are used is when a ‘thing’ doesn’t have a word in English so they borrow a word from a language that does
Affixation: Prefix
when a prefix is added to the front of the word
Affixation: suffix
the most common suffixes are ‘er’ and ‘or’ and sometimes ‘eor’ are added into the end of words
Back clipping
removing the end of a word. e.g. ‘gas’ from ‘gasoline’
Fore clipping
removing the beginning of the word. e.g. ‘gator’ from ‘alligator’
Middle clipping
retaining only the middle if the word as in ‘flu’ from ‘influenza’
acronym
a type of abbreviation formed by the first letters of a word or phrase but are pronounced as a word e.g. NASA
Coinage
when words appear out of nowhere and are unrelated to others. It is extremely rare.
neologism
a new word
convertion
when a new word is formed from a change in word class e.g. the noun ‘party’ has been converged to a verb ‘to party’ or ‘partied’
compound
when a new word is formed by putting two words together such as ‘face’ and ‘book’ to create ‘facebook’
blend
when two or more words are combined to create a new word whose meaning is often a combination of the original words
eponym
things named after real or fictitious person
proprietary name
a brand name or trademark
abbreviation
the process in which a word or phrase is shortened
