If you do some simple research on this, you will find
great explanations with examples. To summarize, however, there are many processes by
which words come into a language.
Aggulutination – forming
new words by adding affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to them, i.e. “use” + “less” +
“ness” = “uselessness”
Acronyms – forming words from
initials of words in a phrase such as RADAR: Radio Detection and Ranging and LASER:
Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of
Radiation
Borrowing – just what it sounds like, borrowing
from another language. English has borrowed words from all sorts of languages – Latin,
German, romance languages, etc. Sometimes this is the same as "loan words" (see
below).
Back-formation – removing prefixes and suffixes
from existing words, such as forming “edit” from
“editor”
Blending – forming a word by joining parts of two
or more other words such as “smog” (smoke = fog)
Clipping –
making a word from part of another word, such as “ad” from “advertisement” or “auto”
from “automobile” etc.
Calque (one of my favorites) –
borrowing a word or phrase from another language that is a word-for-word translation.
Examples are “flea market” from the French "marché aux puces"
(“market of the fleas”) or “by heart” from French “par coeur” or “honeymoon” from
French “lune de miel (moon of honey).
Compounding –
Combining two different words into one – tons of examples of this: airplane,
grandfather, butterfly, outgoing, etc.
Conversion – Using
the same word as different parts of speech, such as “rain” as a noun and a verb or
“snow” as a noun and a verb
Neologism (here is a compound
word for you!) – it literally means “new wordism” but this process is that of making up
totally new words, such as xray, google, blog, kleenex,
etc.
Loan words – borrowing words or phrases from other
languages: déjà vue, cliché, cul-de-sac, etc.
Onomatopoeia
– words that imitate sounds: buzz, jingle, zip, tweet, cukoo,
etc.
There are others, but these are the main
ones.
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