User:Asraliah Basher



- New words enter into our minds and in our language everyday. This comes from the fact that speaking a language means knowing the words and the existence of these words in a language. However, more often we tend to brush off the existence of the words and how they came to be.

- There are over a million of English words that have already been recorded and yet there are about a thousand more new words that are added up to the lexicon each year (Bodle, 2016)

- If we investigate who are responsible for most words to be featured in an English dictionary, we have: - John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a middle-class family. He was educated at St. Paul’s School, then at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English, and prepared to enter the clergy.

- He invented 630 words (fragrance, space, enjoyable, unoriginal, and terrific).

- He is considered to be the greatest neologist.



- Ben Jonson, byname of Benjamin Jonson, (born June 11?, 1572, London, England—died August 6, 1637, London), English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1605), Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614).

- He invented 558 words.

- The English writer and Anglican cleric John Donne is considered now to be the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time. He was born in 1572 to Roman Catholic parents, when practicing that religion was illegal in England. His work is distinguished by its emotional and sonic intensity and its capacity to plumb the paradoxes of faith, human and divine love, and the possibility of salvation. Donne often employs conceits, or extended metaphors, to yoke together “heterogenous ideas,” in the words of Samuel Johnson, thus generating the powerful ambiguity for which his work is famous. After a resurgence in his popularity in the early 20th century, Donne’s standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest writers of English prose, is now assured.

- He invented 342 words such as (normal, and compact).



- William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon. The son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, he was probably educated at the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, where he learned Latin and a little Greek and read the Roman dramatists. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman seven or eight years his senior. Together, they raised two daughters: Susanna, who was born in 1583, and Judith (whose twin brother died in boyhood), born in 1585.

- He invented 229 words like (bandit, critic, lonely, dauntless, and uncomfortable).

- We never know who invented the rest words in the English language. We don't know who to credit for most of these words.

- Even though our knowledge of the inventor of what words is limited, we can instead try to fully understand how these words came to be and there are some mechanisms of word formation.

Examples of Mechanisms of Word Formation

DERIVATION

BACKFOMATION

EPONYMS

BLENDING

ACRONYMS and etc.

- Let's focus with the Derivation, Blending, and Back Formation.

DERIVATION- adding a prefix or suffix to the existing word.

examples:

- realization (realize + action)- "action of making real"

- disconnect (dis + connect)- "break the connection of or between

- predictable (predict + able)- "able to be predicted or anticipated"

BLENDING- taking two or more words, removing parts of each and joining the residues together to create a new word whose meaning is taken from the source words.

examples:

brunch- a meal usually taken late in the morning that combines a late breakfast and an early lunch; blended from breakfast and lunch.

jeggings- tight- fitting stretch pants for women, styles to resemble a pair of denim jeans; blended from jeans and leggings.

BACK FORMATION- forming new words (neologism) by extracting actual or supposed affixes from another word.

examples:

- sculpt (from sculptor),

- scavenge (from scavenger),

- televise (from television), and

- laze (from lazy)

REFERENCES:

Book:

Structures of English

Authors:

 Lelani C. Dapat, EdD

               Jeromil O. Enc, EdD

               Jennifer B. Gonzales, EdD

               Dulce B. Anlagan, EdD

Images:

 Google Search (Wikipedia)