Back-formation
In
etymology, the process of
back-formation is the creation of a
neologism by reinterpreting an earlier word as a derivation and removing apparent affixes, or more generally, by reconstructing an "original" form from any kind of derived form (including abbreviations or inflected forms). The resulting new word is called a
back-formation.
The simplest case is when a longer form of a word pair predates what would usually be the basic form. For example, the noun
resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb
resurrect was then derived from it. We expect the suffix
-ion to be added to a verb to create a noun; when as in this case the suffix is removed from the noun to create the verb, this is a back-formation.
Back formation becomes a kind of
folk etymology 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 asetz (modern
French assez). The
-s was erroneously taken to be a plural inflection.
Many words came into English by this route:
Pease was once a
mass noun but was reinterpreted as a
plural, leading to the back-formation
pea. The noun
statistic was likewise a back-formation from the field of study
statistics. In Britain the word
burgle came into use in the 19th century as a back-formation from
burglar (although in some parts of
North America burglarize is usually used).
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 inhumorous contexts. The comedian
George Gobel regularly used original back-formations in his humorous monologues.
Bill Bryson 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,
burger (and
beefburger,
cheeseburger, etc., from
hamburger) is in common use today though it would have been considered awkward or colloquial as late as the 1940s; and
enthuse (from
enthusiasm) is gaining popularity, though it is still considered substandard by some today. Another example would be the verb
act, which was derived from
action.The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the
Siege of Mafeking 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 or
participle.
Back-formations of borrowed terms generally do not follow the rules of the original language. For example
Homo sapiens is Latin for
thinking man. As with all Linnaean species names, this is singular in Latin (plural would be
homines sapientes) but it is sometimes mistakenly treated as plural in English, with the corresponding singular back-formation
Homo sapien. Similarly
antipodes, borrowed from Greek via Latin, has the apparent form of a plural noun, and is sometimes treated as such, with
antipode taken to mean "an antipodal point". The final
podes is indeed plural, meaning
feet, and the corresponding singular would be transliterated as
pous (foot). However
antipodes itself is a compound of
anti (opposite) and
podes (feet). As such, it is not a plural noun at all, and the singular
antipous, if it existed at all, would mean "a substitute foot." ("Opposite a foot" would be
anti poda.)
Some regard such divergence as incorrect, or as a mark of ignorance. Others assert that a language is determined by its usage and that strictly applying such a principle of correctness would render English a highly irregular blend of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French and every other language from which it had ever borrowed.
*
babysit from
babysitter*
back-form from
back-formation*
bicep from
biceps*
burgle from
burglar*
bushwhack from
bushwhacker*
creep (as a noun for a person) from
creepy*
diplomat from
diplomatic*
edit from
editor*
emote from
emotion*
escalate from
escalator*
fine-tune from
fine tuning*
greed from
greedy (the noun was originally "greediness")
*
interfluve from
interfluvial*
intuit from
intuition*
isolate from
isolated*
lase from
laser*
liaise from
liaison*
mase from
maser*
mix from
mixt (adj. from
Old French, misconstrued as past participle of verb)
*
obsess (meaning "to behave obsessively") from
obsessive*
pea from
Middle English pease*
procéss from
procession*
semantic (adjective) from
semantics*
sightsee from
sightseeing*
surveil from
surveillance*
televise from
television*
tweeze from
tweezers*
upholster from
upholstery*
backronym*
retronym*
junctural metanalysis
