Back-formation

"Back-derivation" redirects here. For derivation of a logical or mathematic expression, see Formal proof. For other uses, see Onomasiology.

Back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via morphology, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the corresponding root word.[1] James Murray coined the term back-formation in 1889.[2] (Oxford English Dictionary Online preserves its first use of 'back-formation' from 1889 in the definition of to burgle; from burglar.)[3]

For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then back-formed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix. This segmentation of resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible because English had examples of Latin words in the form of verb and verb+-ion pairs, such as opine/opinion. These became the pattern for many more such pairs, where a verb derived from a Latin supine stem and a noun ending in ion entered the language together, such as insert/insertion, project/projection, etc.

  1. ^ Crystal, David. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth Edition, Blackwell Publishers, 2008.
  2. ^ Booty, O.A. (24 August 2002). Funny Side of English. Pustak Mahal. ISBN 9788122307993. Retrieved 8 April 2018 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ "Oxford Dictionaries Definition of burgle in English". Oxford Dictionaries Online. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on April 21, 2017. Retrieved 20 April 2017.