Another strange linguistics thing that I adore, back-formation is the forming of a new word by removing affixes (usually not actual affixes but parts of the root presumed to be an affix) from another word.
Some Interesting Examples Include…….
- The verb enthuse from the noun enthusiasm, which was used as early as 1827 but STILL angers people? That’s just how language works, y’all, if you gon’ be mad about enthuse you can’t use the rest of these words. That’s just how it fuckin’ be.
- Singular pea from Middle English plural pease, which was originally singular and collective (like with “wheat” or “corn”).
- The word mix was originally in Middle English myxte which sounded like a past participle, even though it wasn’t.
- Chemist comes from alchemist, where the “al-” prefix is actually the Arabic definite article “the”. Full etymology is something like greek khuma, fluid, to khumeia, art of alloying metals, to Arabic al-kimiya, to early Latin alchimista, to Medieval Latin (al)chimista, to French chimiste, to Early Modern English chymist to our chemist of today. Of course, we still have the word alchemist but it means finding the ultimate panacea and eternal youth and making gold from, like, iron or something. I fucking love historical linguistics.
- The verb escalate from the noun escalator, which was a brand name made from the word escalade plus the suffix “-tor” as in “elevator” (originally the stress was supposed to be on CAL in es-CAL-a-tor, but you don’t always get what you want) and the word escalator was trademarked but rip you really don’t always get what you want. Oh, and then eventually escalate replaced escalade entirely, so, there’s that. (Another side note, the word wasn’t commonly used until its more metaphorical meaning came into play during the cold war)
Other Back-Formations Include…….
- donate from donation
- edit from editor
- televise from television
- babysit from babysitter
- laze from lazy
- grovel from groveling
- surreal from surrealism
- back-formate from back-formation (how fucking meta is that, eh?)
(via tinsnip)
