Word of the Year

Nov 17, 2010 by

And while we are on the subject of “creative” word formation, do you have a favorite made-up, “undictionaried” word? In addition to undictionaried in the sentence above, I recently made up disignore (a blend...

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Blending in

Nov 16, 2010 by

Blending in is probably not what Sarah Palin wanted to achieve (and certainly not what she achieved) with her now-famous “refudiate”. But what it is is a blend, a form of word formation whereby two (or more) words are...

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Take me back…

Nov 5, 2010 by

We tend to think that new words are made by ADDING to already existing words: take establish, add several morphemes to it and you get antidisestablishmentarianism! But words can also be created by taking out a morpheme (or rather...

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