Language Change
Neologism: a newly coined word or expression
Examples of Neologisms
Google: To use an online search engine as the basis for looking up information on the World Wide Web.
Tweet cred: social standing on Twitter.
404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message 404 Not Found, meaning that the requested document could not be located.
Tebowing: description of a prayerful victory stance derived from NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.
Brangelina: used to refer to supercouple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Metrosexual: A man who dedicates a great deal of time and money to his appearance.
Vagjayjay: Slang term for the vagina that was believed to have been coined by Oprah.
Chilax: To calm down or relax, it is a slang term used when someone is starting to get uptight about something that is happening.
Racne: Acne located on a woman’s chest.
Staycation: A vacation at home or in the immediate local area.
How they are created
Affixation - the use of prefixes or suffixes to generate new words.
Compounding - Here a new word is created by joining two free morphemes to create a new word.
Conversion - A new word is created by taking one word class and converting it to another (eg a noun becoming a verb or vice versa).
Back formation - Here a new form is created by removing an affix. An original word was the noun lecher and this has then led to creation of the verb to lech by the removal of the suffix –er.
Clipping - A new word can be created by the shortening of another pre-existing word.
Blending - This draws on clippings of two words to create a new word in combination.
Acronymy - Acronyms are words created by taking the first letter of a number of words. These letters are pronounced as a word, not as separate letters.
Initialism - Like acronyms, these are words that are created by taking the first letter of a number of words to create a new word. The difference is that in an initialism the letters are still said...