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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.
Back-formation in the English language
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 in humorous 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.
The mechanics of back-formation
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.
More examples of back-formation
- 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
See also
"Back-formation"