- Acronymy Acronymy is the process whereby a word is formed from theinitial or beginning segments of a succesion of words. In some cases the initials are pronounced as in military police. In other initials and or beginning segments are pronunced as the spelled word would be. For example NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is pronounced as /neto/ and rader.
Blending is the fusion of two words into one, usually the first part of one words with the last part of another as in gasohol from gasoline and alcohol. The resultant blend partakes of both original meanings. Many blends are bionce words, here today and gone tomorrow and relatively few become part of the standard lexicon. The two classes blends and clipped wrds are not sharply separated and some words may be put into either class.
If someone should ask you "What does a feeper do?" you would probably answer "he feeps of course" you would answer thus because there exist in your mind such word pairs as tell-tellers, write-writer, sing-singer; and you would reason, perhaps unconciously, that on the analogy of these forms the word feeper must have a parallel verb feep. Likewise centuries ago, after the introduction of the nouns peddler, begger, swindler and editor into our language, speakersfollowed the same analogy and created the verbs peddle, beg, swindle, and edit.
Folk Etimology
The tennis term let ball affordsa good ilustration. In this context let has retained the obsolete meaning of prevented, common in the language of shakespeare. A let ball is one which has been prevented from taking its true course by touching the top of the net. It is an entirely different word from the let that means allow. But a neophyt hearing the word on the tennis court may understand it as net, because /i/ and /n/ are not far appart in sound and net makes sense to him whereas let does not. Thus he may use the tern net ball until corrected by a more knowledge player.
Antonomasia means the formation of a common noun, a verb or an adjective from the name of a person or place. For example the word Frisben comes from the Frisbie Bakery in Bridge Water, Connectiqut whosse pie tins were used for a throwing game. The term Vandal derives from the vandals a germanic people who overran southern Europe 150 years ago and sacked and looted Rome in the fifth sentury.
Names from history and literature have given us man common nouns. A lover for instance may be called a romeo, a don juan, a casanova or a gay lothario. If he is too quixotic he may meet his waterloo at the hands of some sheba or jezebel.
Reduplication is the process of froming a new word by doubling a morpheme, usually with a change of vowel or initial consonant as in poo-pooh, tip-top and hanky-panky. The basic originating morphemes is most frequently the second half like dilly-dally, but it may be the first half, like tick-tock or both halves like singsong or neither half like boogie-woogie.
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