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In etymology
Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
, back-formation refers to the process of creating a new lexeme
Lexeme

A lexeme is an abstract Unit of Morphology Semantic analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word....
 (less precisely, a new "word") by removing actual or supposed affix
Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
es. The resulting neologism
Neologism

A neologism is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language . Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event....
 is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray
James Murray (lexicographer)

James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scotland lexicographer and philologist. He was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death....
 in 1897.

Back-formation is distinguished from clipping because they change the part of speech – clipping also creates shortened words from longer words, but does not change the part of speech.

For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix.






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In etymology
Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
, back-formation refers to the process of creating a new lexeme
Lexeme

A lexeme is an abstract Unit of Morphology Semantic analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word....
 (less precisely, a new "word") by removing actual or supposed affix
Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
es. The resulting neologism
Neologism

A neologism is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language . Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event....
 is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray
James Murray (lexicographer)

James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scotland lexicographer and philologist. He was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death....
 in 1897.

Back-formation is distinguished from clipping because they change the part of speech – clipping also creates shortened words from longer words, but does not change the part of speech.

For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix. This segmentation of resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible because English had many examples of Latinate words that had verb and verb+-ion pairs — in these pairs the -ion suffix is added to verb forms in order to create nouns (such as, insert/insertion, project/projection, etc.).

Back formation may be similar to the reanalyses of folk etymologies when it rests on an erroneous understanding of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular noun asset is a back-formation from the plural assets. However, assets is originally not a plural; it is a loan-word from Anglo-Norman
Anglo-Norman language

The Anglo-Norman language is a term traditionally used to refer to the variety of French used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles following the Norman conquest in 1066....
 asetz (modern French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 assez). The -s was reanalyzed as a plural suffix.

Back-formation in the English language

Many words came into English by this route: Pease was once a mass noun
Mass noun

In linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary from language to language....
 but was reinterpreted as a plural
English plural

In the English language, nouns are inflection for grammatical number?that is, Grammatical number or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed....
, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic was likewise a back-formation from the field of study statistics
Statistics

Statistics is a Mathematics pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data....
. In Britain the verb burgle came into use in the 19th century as a back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
 verb burglarize formed by suffixation).

Other examples are:
  • Singular "syrinx
    Syrinx

    In classical mythology, Syrinx was a nymph and a follower of Artemis, known for her chastity. Pursued by the amorous Greek god Pan , she ran to the river's edge and asked for assistance from the river nymphs....
    ", plural "syringes" (from Greek): new singular "syringe
    Syringe

    A syringe is a simple piston pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube , allowing the syringe to take in and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube....
    " formed
  • Singular "sastruga
    Sastruga

    Sastrugi or zastrugi are sharp irregular grooves or ridges formed on a snow surface by wind erosion and Deposition , and found in polar and temperate snow regions....
    ", plural "sastrugi" (from Russian): new Latin-type singular "sastrugus" has been used sometimes.
"euthanase" or "euthanize" (verb) from the noun "euthanasia".

Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange, and are often used for humorous effect. For example, gruntled or pervious (from disgruntled and impervious) would be considered mistakes today, and used only in humorous contexts. The comedian George Gobel
George Gobel

George Leslie Gobel was an American comedian, best known as the star of his own weekly NBC television show, The George Gobel Show, from 1954 to 1960....
 regularly used original back-formations in his humorous monologues. Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson

William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, Order of the British Empire, is a best-selling United States author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science subjects....
 mused that the English language would be richer if we could call a tidy-haired person shevelled - as an opposite to dishevelled.

Frequently back-formations begin in colloquial use and only gradually become accepted. For example, enthuse (from enthusiasm) is gaining popularity, though it is still considered substandard by some today.

The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking
Siege of Mafeking

The Siege of Mafeking was the most famous United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland action in the Second Boer War. It took place at the town of Mafeking in South Africa at over a period of 217 days, from October 1899 to May 1900, and turned Robert Baden-Powell, who went on to found the Scouting Movement, into a national hero....
 briefly created the verb to maffick, meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. "Maffick" was a back-formation from Mafeking, a place-name that was treated humorously as a gerund
Gerund

In linguistics, ?gerund? is a term used to refer to various non-finite verb in various languages:* As applied to English language, it refers to what might be called a verb's action noun, which is one of the uses of the -ing form....
 or participle
Participle

In linguistics, a participle is a derivative of a non-finite verb verb, which can be used in compound Grammatical tense or Grammatical voice, or as a Grammatical modifier....
. There are many other examples of back-formations in the English language
List of English back-formations

Back-formation refers to either the process of creating a new lexeme by removing actual or supposed affixes, or to the neologism formed by such a process....
.

See also

  • List of English back-formations
    List of English back-formations

    Back-formation refers to either the process of creating a new lexeme by removing actual or supposed affixes, or to the neologism formed by such a process....
  • folk etymology
  • backronym
    Backronym

    A backronym is a reverse Acronym and initialism, a phrase constructed after the fact to make an existing word or words into an acronym.Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology....
  • retronym
    Retronym

    A retronym is the modification of the original name of an object or concept to differentiate it from a more recent version of the object, which acquired a modifier or adjective through later developments of the object or concept itself....
  • juncture loss