E N G L ISH L A N G U A G E SERIES

T I TL E NO 7

An Introduction to
Modem English Word-formation
 E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E S E R IE S

General Editor: Randolph Q uirk

Title no:
INVESTIGATING ENGLISH STYLE 1
D a v id C ry stal and D erek D a v y

THE M OVEM ENT OF ENGLISH PROSE 2

Ian A . G o rd o n

A LINGUISTIC GUIDE TO ENGLISH PO ETRY 4

G eo ffrey N . Leech

AN INTRODUCTION TO 7
M ODERN ENGLISH WORD-FORMATION

Valerie A dam s

COHESION IN ENGLISH 9
M . A . K . H alliday and R u qaiya Hasan

AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH 10
TRANSFORMATIONAL SYN TAX
R o d n e y H uddleston

MEANING AND FORM 11

D w ig h t B olinger

DESIGNS IN PROSE 12

W alter N a sh

STYLE IN FICTION 13

G eo ffrey N . Leech and M ichael H . Short

THE RHYTHMS OF ENGLISH PO ETRY 14

D erek A ttrid ge

MESSAGE AND EMPHASIS 15

J o sef T a glich t

THE LANGUAGE OF HUM O UR 16

W alter N a sh

GOOD ENGLISH AND THE GRAMMARIAN 17

Sidney G reenbaum
An Introduction to
Modern English
W ord-for mation

V A L E R IE A D A M S

Lecturer in English
University College London

§J Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
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F ifth im p ression 1 9 8 8

P u b lish ed 2 0 1 3 by R outledge
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Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group an informa business,

C o p y rig h t © 1 9 7 3 , T aylor & Fran cis.

A ll righ ts reserv ed . N o p a r t o f th is b o o k m a y b e rep rin ted o r rep ro d u ce d o r

utilised in an y fo rm o r by an y ele ctro n ic, m e ch a n ic a l, o r o th e r m ea n s, n ow
k n ow n o r h ereafter invented, in clu d in g p h o to co p y in g an d reco rd in g , o r in any
in fo rm a tio n storage o r retriev al system , w ith o u t p erm issio n in w ritin g fro m
th e pub lish ers.

N otices
K n o w led g e an d b est p ra ctic e in this field are co n stan tly ch an gin g. A s n ew re ­
se arch an d exp e rie n ce b ro a d en o u r u n d erstan d in g , ch an ges in rese a rc h m e th ­
o d s, p ro fession al p ra c tice s , o r m ed ical tre a tm e n t m a y b e c o m e n e c e s s a ry

P ra c titio n e rs an d re se arch ers m u s t always rely o n th eir ow n exp e rie n ce and

k n ow led ge in evalu atin g and u sin g an y in fo rm a tio n , m e th o d s, co m p o u n d s, o r
ex p e rim e n ts d escrib ed h erein . In u sin g su ch in fo rm a tio n o r m e th o d s th ey
sh o u ld be m in d fu l o f th eir ow n safety and th e safety o f oth ers, in clu d in g p a r ­
ties fo r w h o m th e y h ave a p rofession al responsibility.

To th e fullest ex te n t o f th e law, n eith er th e P u b lish er n o r th e au th o rs, co n trib u ­

to rs, o r ed itors, assu m e any liability for an y in ju ry a n d /o r d am age to p erso n s
o r p ro p e rty as a m a tte r o f p ro d u c ts liability, n egligen ce o r oth erw ise , o r fro m
an y use o r o p eratio n o f an y m e th o d s, p ro d u c ts, in stru ctio n s, o r ideas c o n ­
tain ed in th e m a te ria l herein .

IS B N 13: 9 7 8 - 0 - 5 8 2 - 5 5 0 4 2 - 1 (pbk)
Contents

Foreword v

Preface vii

1 The w ord I

2 W o rd classes 16

3 Some terms and definitions 30

4 Derivation b y zero suffix 37

5 N oun compounds 57

6 Adjective compounds 90

7 Verb compounds and backformation 105

8 Compounds containing particles 113

9 Neo-classical compounds 128

10 Clippings and acronyms 135

11 Morphemes, phonaesthemes and blends 139

12 Compound-blends 148

13 Group-forming 161

14 W ord-form ation and rules 197

References and abbreviations 217

Index 223
Acknowledgments

O ur thanks are due to all the copyright owners whose material is quoted
in the text, where full acknowledgment to source is m ade; and for readers
outside the United Kingdom w e would point out that every reference to
the Daily Express and to the Evening Standard should be understood to
mean the London Daily Express and London Evening Standard respectively.
Foreword

English is the text-book example o f a language that expands its vocabulary

b y unashamedly raiding other languages. For a thousand years new words
have, like dockside imports, often borne an easily readable stamp o f their
country o f origin: outlaw from medieval Scandinavia, gentle from medieval
France, madrigal from Renaissance Italy, chutney from nineteenth-century
India and karate from twentieth-century Japan, to name a few examples
that indicate the chronological and geographical range. Such words clearly
and interestingly reflect the contact that English-speaking peoples have
had w ith other countries and other cultures, and so fascinated have
scholars been for several generations by the patterns o f word adoption
that w e have tended to regard this process as virtually the sole means by
which changes in our vocabulary take place.
It is not, o f course. W e sometimes translate the foreign w ord we
need, as Bernard Shaw did w ith Nietzsche’s Vbermensch to produce
superman; or w e achieve a new means o f designation by using an existing
w ord in a different sense, as w ith the homosexual meaning o f gay. O r -
to come to the concern o f the present book - w e can permute existing
words and parts o f words to make new combinations such as the nouns
boathouse, houseboat, or the adjective ungovernable.
W ith all o f these devices, w e see vocabulary change triggered o ff by
cultural change even where no transparently ‘exotic’ w ord appears as a
result: the homely corn becomes the American w ord for the exotic maize
when and because Americans start encountering maize in their daily life.
But changes in vocabulary by the processes o f word-form ation have, in
addition to their cultural and historical interest, a purely linguistic interest.
That is to say, there are abstractly describable patterns which explain the
regularities in the new words w e coin and which explain also w h y certain
formations would be unlikely or impossible (such as a negative adjective
*ableungovern). B y contrast, there are few generalizations that one could
Vi F OR E W O R D

make in predicting the shape or internal structure o f foreign words that w e

m ight adopt. Thus, although foreign words are normally given a ‘domesti­
cated* pronunciation, w e cannot even say that an adopted w ord w ill be
repronounced with only English sounds and sound sequences (raison
d'etre).
This is not to say that there are rules o f word-form ation as freely avail­
able to the native speaker as his rules o f sentence-formation. W here almost
every sentence w e use is composed ad hoc to suit the occasion and is thus a
‘new sentence’ , it is relatively rare for us to form a ‘new w ord’ and when
we do our hearers or readers are more or less conscious both o f its newness
and o f the rarity w ith which they encounter the phenomenon o f newness.
Even so, they w ould be generally able to distinguish a new w ord that
seemed well-form ed (‘This wretched cupboard is ungetinable) from one
that is not (*getunablein). T o this extent, word-form ation is interestingly
rule-bound and Valerie Adams gives careful consideration to the many
com plex kinds o f regularity that are to be observed. She deserves especial
praise, however, for resisting the temptation to sweep under an exquisitely
patterned carpet the irregularities and striking idiosyncrasies which are -
to say the least - no less characteristic o f the creative side o f lexical usage.
The volum e makes a welcom e contribution in a difficult and contro­
versial field. As English has increasingly come into world-w ide use, there
has arisen an acute need for more information on the language and the
ways in which it is used. The English Language Series seeks to meet this
need and to play a part in further stimulating the study and teaching o f
English b y providing up-to-date and scholarly treatments o f topics most
relevant to present-day English - including its history and traditions, its
sound patterns, its grammar, its lexicology, its rich variety in speech
and writing, and its standards in Britain, the U S A and the other principal
areas where the language is used.

University College London R A N D O L P H QUI RK

March 1973
Preface

The study o f word-form ation offers a great m any puzzles to the present-
day student o f language; as Esko Pennanen (1972) observes in a discussion
o f some o f the difficulties, not the least o f these is its status as a branch o f
linguistic study. I have not tried in this book to grapple w ith major issues,
such as the possibility o f devising rules to account for just those compounds
and affixed words which exist and are acceptable, and those which could
exist and would be acceptable i f they were to be formed; or the possibility
o f giving convincing reasons w h y some words are unacceptable while
others o f similar make-up are not. In the final pages I suggest - as others
have recently suggested - that i f w e are to make much progress in under­
standing such matters, the topic o f ‘word-form ation as it is here defined
m ay have to be recognized as after all rather superficially conceived: our
real business should be with meanings and h ow they are expressed and
combined. Questions like these, however, await a better understanding
o f many syntactic and semantic matters; they are for the future, and for
works far more ambitious than this one.
The chapters which follow are chiefly concerned with data, and with
classifications o f data. As an introduction to the subject, they cannot claim
to be complete, since a comprehensive treatment o f the prefixes and suf­
fixes is lacking. But I have tried to indicate to some extent, though in no
very systematic w ay, h ow the various traditionally-recognized patterns
o f word-form ation are interrelated; how , for instance, the make-up o f
noun compounds, verb compounds and compounds containing particles
m ay be considered along with the patterns o f zero derivation; h ow blends
and compounds m ay be compared; h ow compound-elements and blend-
elements m ay be more, or less, like prefixes and suffixes; and h ow certain
concepts, such as ‘instrumentality’, ‘location’, ‘resemblance’, appear and
re-appear in words o f various types.
Throughout, I have included illustrative examples gathered from the
Viii P REF ACE

most recent sources, chiefly from newspapers and magazines. I believe that
such transient coinages are valuable in helping us - and occasionally
surprising us - when the dictionary lets us down. I have used them to show,
for instance, how w e are capable o f making new compound verbs, such
as to chaujfeur-drift, or to consumer-test; and how patterns which w e might
have thought were played out are still alive. Thus w e are able to form
adjective compounds like browfurrowed and yawning dull on the patterns
o f the cliche-like heart-broken and scalding hot; and the little group o f
‘animal’ verbs such as to ape, to wolf, gets a new member with the coining
o f to squirrel. Examples from these sources also provide interesting evidence
o f h ow word-elements o f all kinds m ay be taken up and used in new
formations. It was as natural for the Victorian journalist o f the 1880s to
coin the word camelcade for a procession or cavalcade o f camels as it was
for the reporter o f the 1960s; and Sir Thomas M ore m ight have been
surprised to learn that his invention, utopia, was to serve as a precedent for
such twentieth-century creations as pornotopia.
I am very grateful to many friends and colleagues for their help and
advice; in particular to W olf-D ietrich Bald, Michael Black, Derek D avy,
Geoffrey Leech and Eugene W inter for their valuable comments on por­
tions o f earlier drafts; and to John W ells for his help with the section on
Esperanto. I am especially indebted to R uth Kempson, w ho was a most
helpful critic o f most o f the final draft. Lastly, I record m y gratitude to
Randolph Q uirk for his encouragement throughout; for his patient and
stimulating criticism o f the whole book; and for his generously-given
attention to every aspect o f m y w ork, from the most general issues down
to the contribution o f examples, and practical advice on the setting-out o f
the material. Having acknowledged such debts, I can only conclude by
emphasizing that all the shortcomings which remain are mine alone.

University College London VA

March 1973
Chapter 1

The word

1.1 Introductory
The ways in which new words are formed, and the factors which govern
their acceptance into the language, are generally taken very much for
granted by the average speaker. T o understand a word, it is not necessary
to be aware o f how it is constructed, or o f whether it is simple or complex,
that is, whether or not it can be broken down into tw o or more constitu­
ents. W e are able to use a w ord which is new to us when w e find out what
object or concept it denotes. Some words, o f course, are more ‘ transparent’
than others. W e need only have met the separate elements o f the adjectives
unfathomable, indescribable, to be able to recognize the familiar pattern o f
negative prefix + transitive verb + adjective-forming suffix on which
many words o f similar form, like uneatable, are constructed. K now ing the
pattern, w e can guess their meanings: ‘ cannot be fathom ed’, ‘ cannot be
described’ - although w e are not surprised to find other, similar-looking
words, for example unfashionable, unfavourable, for which this analysis
w ill not w ork. W e recognize as ‘ transparent’ the adjectives unassuming,
unheard-of while taking for granted the fact that w e cannot use assuming
or heard-of W e accept as quite natural the fact that although w e can use
the verbs to drum, to pipe, to trumpet, w e cannot use the verbs to piano,
to violin; and w e cope effortlessly with the apparent paradox o f to dust,
meaning either ‘ to remove dust from something’ or ‘ to apply a dust-like
substance to something’ .
But when w e meet new coinages, like tape-code, freak-out, shutup-ness,
beautician, talkathon, w e m ay not readily be able to explain our reactions
to them. W e may find them acceptable and in accordance with our feelings
about how words should be built u p ; or they may seem to us offensive,
and in some w ay contrary to the rules. Innovations in vocabulary are
capable o f arousing quite strong feelings in people who may otherwise
2 MO D E R N E NG L I S H W O R D - F O R M A T I O N

not be in the habit o f thinking very much about language. Q uirk (1968)
quotes some letters to the press o f a familiar kind, written to protest about
‘ horrible ja rg o n ’, such as break-down (o f figures), ‘ vile ’ words like
transportation, and the ‘ atrocity’ lay-by (127-8). The apologist w ho wrote
the follow ing in The Times o f 3 September 1943 showed an unusually
liberal attitude:

O n August 27 this journal reported a speech in which M r Herbert

Morrison used the word ‘ triphibious’. . . . O n [August 31] a public
school man, a master o f English, fitted M r Morrison’s new adjective
with its corresponding noun. . . . A new w ord that catches on, or can
be forced on, is no monster; it is a happy invention. ‘ Triphibian’
therefore m ay now join ‘ happidrome’ , ‘ sportsdrome’, and ‘nor­
m alcy’ . . .
Perhaps the status o f the master o f English mentioned - W inston Churchill
- had something to do with triphibian s favourable reception. But to pro­
test against lexical innovations is very often to appear ridiculous to later
generations: w ho today would wince at aviation (now that w e are thor­
oughly used to it), about which The Daily Chronicle commented in 1909:
‘ Y o u could hardly think o f a worse w ord.’
It is clear that various factors are involved in our attitudes to words.
Lay-by was objected to because it appears to be formed from the non­
standard verb to lay (= ‘ to lie’), and triphibian is the result o f the splitting
up o f an element amphi-, in amphibian, which anyone with a knowledge
o f Greek knows means ‘ both ’ and should not be split. O ur knowledge o f
the classical languages causes us to object to ‘ hybrid’ words, composed o f
a Latin and a Greek element, like television, or a classical and a native
element, like speedometer. The objectionableness o f break-down and trans­
portation is not a matter o f the breaking o f rules, and is less easy to pin­
point. Unfamiliarity alone may be enough to cause prejudice against a
word. Patrial (1629, = ‘ o f or belonging to one’s native country’) was
recently re-introduced for legal purposes connected with the Immigration
A ct o f 1971. Although obviously useful and o f w holly respectable Latin
ancestry (from a presumed fo rm patrialis, fro m patria, ‘ fatherland’), it was
at once denounced (by a professor o f law) as ‘ barbarous’. Manual, on the
other hand, a w ord o f similar make-up (from Latin manualis, ‘pertaining
to the hand’), causes no such reaction - indeed its secure establishment in
the language was probably responsible for the prejudice against its
synonym o f Teutonic origin, handbook, which appeared in O ld English,
fell into disuse after the M iddle Ages, and was denounced in 1838 as a
 THE W O R D 3

‘ tasteless innovation’ (see Jespersen 1905, §47). Speakers o f English appear

to be conservative in matters o f vocabulary, or at least to think that they
are; but it m ay be that British speakers are more conservative than
Americans: during the present century, attention-catching neologisms
like aquacade, sexploitation, swelegant, have appeared more frequently in
American newspapers and magazines than in British ones.1
In the chapters that follow , I shall be concerned with some unconven­
tional patterns o f word-m aking, seen against a background o f those
established and productive patterns on which most generally-acceptable
new words are formed. The reader w ill come across a number o f ephem­
eral formations, illustrated to a large extent by quotations from news­
papers. And in Chapter 13, w e shall look at some developments that have
been taking place over the last four hundred years or so, and it w ill be
clear that it is not only modern word-coiners who break the ‘ rules’
(cf the characteristic remark o f a correspondent to the press quoted by
Q uirk (1968, 127): ‘ In these days o f scientific as opposed to cultural
education w e need specially to be on our guard against debasement o f
language’). From an inspection o f a range o f established and transient
coinages, w e may gain some idea o f the various forces at w ork in English
word-form ation and, incidentally, come to appreciate the irrelevance o f
Fowler’s indignant protest: ‘ word-m aking, like other manufactures,
should be done by those who know h ow to do it. Others should neither
attempt it for themselves, nor assist the deplorable activities o f amateurs
b y giving currency to fresh coinages before there has been time to test
them ’ (1965, 253).2

1.2 W ord-form ation and linguistics

The subject o f word-form ation has not until recently received very much
attention from descriptive grammarians o f English, or from scholars
working in the field o f general linguistics. As a collection o f different
processes - compounding, affixation, ‘ conversion’, ‘ backformation’ and
so on, about which, as a group, it is difficult to make general statements,
word-form ation usually makes a brief appearance in one or tw o chapters
o f a grammar. And the subject has not been attractive to linguists for tw o
reasons - its connections with the non-linguistic world o f things and ideas,
for which words provide the names, and its equivocal position as between
descriptive and historical studies. A few brief remarks, which necessarily
present a much over-simplified picture, on the course which linguistics
has taken in the last hundred years w ill make this clearer.
4 MO D E R N E NGL I S H W O R D - F O R M A T I O N

The nineteenth century, the period o f great advances in historical and

comparative language study, saw the first claims o f linguistics to be a
science, comparable in its methods with the natural sciences which were
also enjoying a period o f exciting discovery. These claims rested on the
detailed study, b y comparative linguists, o f formal correspondences in the
Indo-European languages, and their realization that such study depended
on the assumption o f certain natural ‘ law s’ o f sound change. As Robins
observes in his discussion o f the linguistics o f the latter part o f the nine­
teenth century:

The history o f a language is traced through recorded variations in the

forms and meanings o f its words, and languages are proved to be related
by reason o f their possession o f words bearing formal and semantic
correspondences to each other such as cannot be attributed to mere
chance or to recent borrowing. I f sound change were not regular, i f
word-form s were subject to random, inexplicable, and unmotivated
variation in the course o f time, such arguments would lose their validity
and linguistic relations could only be established historically by extra-
linguistic evidence such as is provided in the Rom ance field o f languages
descended from Latin. (1967, 183)

The rise and development in the twentieth century o f synchronic de­

scriptive linguistics meant a shift o f emphasis from historical studies, but
not from the idea o f linguistics as a science based on detailed observation
and the rigorous exclusion o f all explanations dependent on extra-
linguistic factors. As early as 1876, Henry Sweet had written:

before history must come a knowledge o f what exists. W e must learn

to observe things as they are, without regard to their origin, just as a
zoologist must learn to describe accurately a horse or any other animal.
N o r w ould the mere statement that the modern horse is a descendant o f
a three-toed marsh quadruped be accepted as an exhaustive descrip­
tion . . . Such however is the course being pursued by most antiquarian
philologists. (1875-6, 471)

The most influential scholar concerned with the new linguistics was
Ferdinand de Saussure, w ho emphasized the distinction between external
linguistics - the study o f the effects on a language o f the history and culture
o f its speakers, and internal linguistics - the study o f its system and rules.
Language, studied synchronically, as a system o f elements definable in
relation to one another, must be seen as a fixed state o f affairs at a particular
point in time. It was internal linguistics, stimulated b y de Saussure’s w ork
 THE W O R D 5

(1916), that was to be the main concern o f twentieth-century scholars,

and within it there could be no place for the study o f the formation o f
words, with its close connections with the external world and its implica­
tions o f constant change. A n y discussion o f new formations as such means
the abandonment o f the strict distinction between history and the present
moment. As Harris expressed it in his influential Structural Linguistics
(1951,255): ‘ The methods o f descriptive linguistics cannot treat o f the pro­
ductivity o f elements since that is a measure o f the difference between our
corpus and some future corpus o f the language.’ Leonard Bloomfield,
whose book, Language (1933), was the next w ork o f major influence after
that o f de Saussure, re-emphasized the necessity o f a scientific approach,
and the consequent difficulties in the w ay o f studying ‘ m eaning’, and
until the middle o f the nineteen-fifties, interest was centred on the isolating
o f minimal segments o f speech, the description o f their distribution rela­
tive to one another, and their organization into larger units. The funda­
mental unit o f grammar was not the word but a smaller unit, the
morpheme, about which Chapter 11 w ill have more to say.
T h e next m ajor change o f emphasis in linguistics was m arked b y the
publication in 1957 o f N o a m C h o m s k y ’s Syntactic Structures. A s
C h o m s k y stated it, one o f the aims o f linguistics was n o w seen to be to
m ake a gram m ar m irror ‘the behavior o f the speaker w h o , on the basis
o f a finite and accidental experience w ith language can produce and
understand an indefinite num ber o f new sentences’ (15). T h e idea o f
prod u ctivity, or creativity, previously excluded fro m linguistics, or
discussed in terms o f probabilities in the effo rt to maintain the view o f
language as existing in a static state,3 was seen to be o f central
im portance. B u t still w o rd -fo rm a tio n rem ained a topic neglected b y
linguists, and fo r several g o o d reasons. C h o m s k y (1965, Chapter 1)
made explicit the distinction, fundam ental to linguistics today (and
com parable to that m ade b y de Saussure between langue, the system o f
a language, and parole, the set o f utterances o f the language), between
linguistic com petence, ‘the speaker-hearer’s kn o w led ge o f his lan­
gu age’ and perform ance, ‘the actual use o f language in concrete
situations’ (C h o m sk y 1965, 4). Linked w ith this distinction are the
notions o f ‘gram m aticalness’ and ‘acceptability’; in C h o m s k y ’s
w ords, ‘A cceptability is a concept that belongs to the study o f p e rfo r­
mance, whereas gram maticalness belongs to the study o f com petence’
(1965, 11). A ‘gram m atical’ utterance is one w h ich m ay be generated
and interpreted b y the rules o f the gram m ar; an ‘acceptable’ utterance
is one w h ich is ‘p erfectly natural and im m ediately com prehen-
6 MO DE R N ENGLI SH W O R D - F O R M A T I O N

sib le . . . and in no w a y bizarre or outlandish’ (1965, 10). It is easy to

show, as C h o m sk y does, that a gram m atical sentence m ay not be
acceptable. For instance, this is the cheese the rat the cat caught stole
appears ‘bizarre’ and unacceptable because w e have d ifficu lty in w o r k ­
ing it out, not because it breaks any gram m atical rules. Generally,
how ever, it is to be expected that grammaticalness and acceptability
w ill g o hand in hand w here sentences are concerned.
The ability to make and understand new words is obviously as much a
part o f our linguistic competence as the ability to make and understand
new sentences, and so, as Pennanen (1972, 293) points out, ‘ it is an obvious
gap in transformational grammars not to have made provision for treating
w ord-form ation’ . But, as we noticed in the first section o f this chapter,
w e m ay readily think o f words, like to piano, to violin, against which w e
can invoke no rule, but which are definitely ‘ unacceptable’ for no obvious
reason. The incongruence o f gram m atically and acceptability, that is,
is far greater where words are concerned than where sentences are con­
cerned. It is so great, in fact, that the exercise o f setting out the ‘ rules ’ for
forming words has so far seemed to many linguists to be o f questionable
usefulness. The occasions on which w e would have to describe the output
o f such rules as ‘ grammatical but non-occurring’ (cf Zim m er 1964, 18) are
just too numerous. And there are further difficulties in treating new words
like new sentences. A novel w ord (like handbook or patrial) m ay attract
unwelcome attention to itself and appear to be the result o f the breaking
o f rules rather than o f their application. And, as w e saw with aviation,
the more accustomed to a word w e become, the more likely w e are to
find it acceptable, whether it is ‘ grammatical’ or not - or perhaps w e
should say, whether or not it was ‘ grammatical’ at the time it was first
formed, since a new w ord once formed, often becomes merely a member
o f an inventory; its formation is a historical event, and the ‘ rule ’ behind it
may then appear irrelevant.
I shall largely ignore these problems and issues, since I am concerned in
this book mainly to describe and exem plify the results o f some present-day
processes o f word-formation. I shall return briefly in Chapter 14 to the
matter o f word-form ation and general rules; meanwhile it w ill be con­
venient to em ploy tw o useful terms suggested by Jespersen, w ho was
grappling with related topics in the nineteen-twenties. The following
passage, taken out o f context, appears to present a gross over-simplification,
but it provides us with a useful rough distinction: ‘ W hile in handling
formulas m emory, or the repetition o f what one has once learned, is
everything, free expressions involve another kind o f mental activity; they
 THE W O R D 7

have to be created in each case anew by the speaker, w ho inserts the words
that fit the particular situation' (Jespersen 1924, 19). W e may say, for the
time being, that it is w ith formulas, or fixed expressions, that word-
formation is mainly concerned, while syntax deals w ith the patterns
on which free expressions are constructed, though w e should remember
that the distinction between free expressions and fixed ones is not by
any means clear-cut. I shall be concerned in the rest o f this chapter, and
in Chapter 2, w ith the boundary which I shall set between ‘ word-form a-
tion ’ and ‘ syntax’, and w ith the areas in which this boundary is blurred,
before beginning to describe the main products o f ‘ word-form ation’ .
But in Chapter 14 I shall look again at the distinction between syntax
and word-formation, and try to present the matter in a rather different
light.

1.3 Defining the word

W hat exactly is a w ord ? This is a term which is usually taken for granted,
and never offers any difficulty until we try to state precisely what w e mean
by it. The failure o f general linguists to provide a consistent definition o f
the word across languages has shown that it can only be defined with
respect to a particular language; but it is also evident that a word-like
unit is equally central and unmistakable for speakers o f very diverse
languages. Edward Sapir relates in support o f the w ord’s ‘ psychological
validity’ his experience in teaching tw o American Indians to write their
ow n languages:

Both had some difficulty in learning to break up a word into its con­
stituent sounds, but none whatever in determining the w o rd s. . . the
words, whether abstract relational entities like English that or but or
com plex sentence-words. . . are . . . isolated precisely as I or any other
student w ould have isolated'them. (1921, 34 n.)

The w ord in English m ay be simple, composed o f one constituent only,

like bat, hammer or sycamore; or it m ay be complex, containing more than
one constituent, such as blackbird, fourth. The elements o f a com plex word
may be free form s: elements which in other contexts are independent, as
those in blackbird, devil-may-care; or they may be bound forms: prefixes
and suffixes, which never appear independently, like the first and last
constituents o f uneatable or the -th o f fourth. Simple and com plex words
alike are distinguished from other constructions, it is generally agreed, by
the fixed order o f their constituents and b y the impossibility o f interrupting
8 MO D E R N ENGLI SH W O R D - F O R M A T I O N

them by a pause, or o f inserting other elements. Exceptions to this rule look

very odd indeed (and are effective because they are exceptions), cf abso-
bloominlutely [Alan Jay Lerner, M y Fair Lady, 1956, Penguin 1959, 23]
andfanfuckingtastick [51c]: ‘ “ W ell, h ow are you ? Have you had a good
tim e?” “ Fanfuckingtastick! N ever stopped laughing, have w e ? ” ’
[John Osborne, The Hotel in Amsterdam, 1968, 130].4 H owever, com plex
words composed entirely o f free forms exhibit among their elements the
same kinds o f relationships that are found in sentences - for instance
attributive adjective-noun, as in blackbird, verb-object, as in forget-me-
not - and for this reason they are sometimes considered to be on the border­
line between syntax and word-formation. As w ill appear later in this
book, com plex words o f many different kinds contain relationships which
are also found in free expressions. But there are structures, word-like in
their semantic unity, whose elements are only partially fixed in their
order, or which to a limited extent permit interruption, and it is these
which can more properly be regarded as on the borderline. Some examples
o f such structures are given in the next section.

1.4 Words and phrases

Sometimes phrase-like characteristics o f a sequence are betrayed by the
w ay in which the plural is formed. This is not always so, and some com­
plex nouns which form their plurals in an unorthodox manner must be
seen simply as exceptions to the rule o f the uninterruptibility o f the word.
Am ong such exceptions are certain compounds with man-, woman- as
first element, which generally pluralize both elements, as in men-servants,
women-folk. Other similar compounds, like maid-servant, boyfriend, have
normal plurals. Another exceptional group o f compounds in which usage
is divided over the placing o f the plural marker is exemplified by lord
lieutenant, court martial, which are made up o f a head noun and a following
m odifying adjective on the Rom ance pattern. (The O E D gives the plural
o f court martial as ‘ courts martial, sometimes incorr. court martials \)
The interruptibility o f words like man-servant, court martial is due to
accidents o f historical development, and does not indicate that the con­
stituents o f such words are less firm ly attached to one another than those o f
compounds which form their plurals normally. N oun compounds with
-ful(l) as second element are rather different. These vary as to the placing
o f the plural marker: for such words as handful, bagful, sackful, spoonful,
Webster (1961) gives tw o plural forms, handfuls, handsful, and so on.
Here, interruptibility by s shows doubtful word-status. There is a pro­
gression from phrase to word (along with a semantic change from ‘ con­
 THE WO R D 9

tainer’ to ‘ contents’) which can be seen in the series (three) bags fu ll -

bagsful(l) - bagfuls. A less familiar combination with -ful(l) is more likely
to have its first element pluralized than a very com mon one which has had
time to become fixed, like mouthful, which admits s only finally. Certain
noun-preposition-noun phrases also show their incomplete unification
by the possibility o f pluralizing the first noun: dogs in the manger, men o f war,
sons in law, tugs of war.
Phrasal verbs, combinations o f verb and adverb, like to build up, to take
over, and prepositional verbs, combinations o f verb and preposition, like
to laugh at are both word-like and phrase-like, and are in fact sometimes
called ‘ semi-compounds’, for instance by Kruisinga (1932). Though they
often form a semantic unit, and may be equivalent to a single-item verb
(to build up: to erect, amass; to take away: to remove; to laugh at: to deride,
ridicule), their constituents are interruptible by the inflections o f the verb,
and in the case o f transitive phrasal verbs, by an object as well. But unlike
some other ‘ semi-compounds ’ (see below), these verbs are uniform in their
syntactic behaviour, and are not subject to closer unification o f their
elements with the passage o f time. Nom inal structures derived from
verb-particle collocations, however, m ay be more, or less, word-like.
(For more about particles, see 3.3 below.) In noun-particle
compounds like looker on, passer by, summing up, from the verb-particle
collocations look on, pass by, sum up, the tw o elements retain some
independence. The -er and - ing endings are attached to the first elements
(though colloquially both elements, may take an -er, cf ‘ Girls . . .
m ight be keen to invest ^1-25 in a boot taker-offer’ [Evening Standard
19 February 1971, 23/1]). The plural s is also added to the first constituents.
This is not true o f the much larger non-suffixed group o f nouns exempli­
fied by build-up, take-over, which form their plurals in the normal way.
Other features contribute to the feeling that words like looker on are less
firm ly ‘ solidified’ than those like build-up: they are less frequently
hyphenated than compounds o f non-suffixed noun and particle; and their
accentual pattern is similar to that o f the verb-particle collocations on
which they are based (see 8.2.1 below). W hile looker on has its primary
accent on the same element as the phrasal verb to look on, the noun take­
over is accentually distinguished from the verb to take over. (For a note on
‘accent’, see 3.5 below.) This accentual n ou n -verb distinction however
is not entirely clear-cut, as Bolinger (1961a) shows with such examples
as a frantic wriggle loose, with a dart up and a scurry off, which, as new and
probably non-permanent formations, are likely to retain the accentual
pattern o f the verb phrases on which they are based. And Fairclough
(1965, 82) cites an example: ‘ no great leaps forward are planned’, in
10 M O D E R N E NG L I S H W O R D - F O R M A T I O N

which the placing o f the s, as well as the likelihood o f an accent on

forward, shows that noun and particle are incompletely unified, and
cannot be regarded as forming a com plex word.
Marchand (1969, 202) notes that adjectives in -able from verb-particle
collocations m ay drop the particle, as in accountable, reliable, from account
{for), rely (on), or they m ay retain it as a kind o f infix, as in (un)get-at-able,
(un)putdownable. But notice also fallable-in-love-with, in which the suffix
intervenes between verb and preposition: ‘ N o b o d y could ever meet
anyone remotely fallable-in-love-with on the Irish M ail’ [Evening Standard
30 July 1968, 8/5].
Phrases consisting o f verb+com plem ent + preposition, such as give
rise to, take advantage of, are also called ‘ semi-compounds* by Kruisinga.
These are fixed in varying degrees. Give rise to ( = ‘ cause*) for instance,
m ay not be interrupted b y modification o f the noun, as in *give immediate
rise to; its elements are not separated in the passive:. . . was given rise to is
possible, but not rise was given to . . . Take advantage of, however, is not
subject to these restrictions: he took fu ll advantage o f . . . and advantage was
taken o f . . . are both grammatical sequences.5 Another kind o f ‘ semi­
compound*, similar in m any respects to these verbal phrases, consists
o f preposition - noun - preposition sequences like in view of, by dint of A t
the ‘ most fixed* end o f the scale are examples like these tw o, in which
the prepositions are invariable and the noun is isolated. Dint appears only
in this context, and view, like rise in give rise to, lacks much o f the meaning
which it has in free phrases. For want of, in process of, show more freedom :
the first preposition m ay be varied, the noun is not semantically isolated,
and it m ay be modified by the. A t the request of has more flexibility still,
w ith the potentiality for premodification o f the noun by an adjective,
and replacement in a sentence b y at (his) request.6
‘ Binomials* - sequences o f tw o words, usually nouns or adjectives,
linked usually b y a conjunction - vary in their fixity. Fun and games, wild
and woolly, for example, are not reversible, whereas gold and silver, knife
and fork are, though this order is more frequent than the reversed one.
A t the ‘ most free’ end o f the scale are expressions like shoes and socks, for
which there is no generally preferred order.7 And, finally, w e m ay notice
that idiomatic phrases generally m ay acquire a certain fixity, usually as
regards their nominal elements. The plural o f still life ( = ‘ picture o f
inanimate objects’), for some speakers is still lives, but for others still lifes.
It is possible to admonish one person: use your loaf!, and w e m ay put the
verb into the past tense: he used his loaf; but a group o f people could hardly
be told: use your loaves!
 THE W O R D II

These few examples give some indication o f the distinction I am making

between free expressions and fixed expressions. I shall say no more about
phrasal verbs and other partially fixed structures, like give rise to, in view
of\fun and games. There is an important difference between the ways in
which these take on the identifying characteristics o f words, and the
central processes o f word-form ation which are described and exemplified
in later chapters. The fixing of, for instance, a preposition - noun - preposi­
tion phrase takes place gradually, sometimes over centuries. For example,
the O E D records a first instance o f ine stude o f in 1225 (when the noun
(= ‘place’) could be used freely in other contexts), and notes: ‘ the tw o
words in stead = “ in p lace” , rarely written as one w ord before 1620, but
seldom separately after c 1640 exc. when separated b y a possessive pro­
noun . . . as in my stead.. . . formerly also in the stead o f w hich is still used
dialectally, eg in the southern counties o f Scotland’ [OED , s.v. instead].
The first recorded appearance o f instead used alone, adverbially, is dated
1667. The formation o f a compound word, like chicken-coop or cold cream,
on the other hand, though this too m ay be the result o f the frequent
collocation o f items, can be seen as taking place in a single step, w ith no
intermediate stages. It is true that an expression like cold cream can be either
fixed or free; but in using it w e make a choice. Either it is free (= ‘ cream
which is co ld ’) or fixed ( = ‘ a particular kind o f cream for the face’). It
is true, however, that the boundary between compound and phrase m ay
be uncertain in individual cases: this is discussed in 5.1, 6.1, 8.1.1, 8.1.2,
and 8.1.4 below.

1.5 Derivation and inflection

Derivation by affix resembles inflection in some respects, and in Chapter 2
it will be seen that, from the historical point o f view at any rate, they are
not always distinct. Their differences, however, are important for an under­
standing o f the distinction between word-form ation and syntax with
which I am concerned in these first tw o chapters.
The chief inflectional affixes o f English are the plural marker, spelt s in
cats, dogs, es in glasses, en in oxen, expressed by a change o f vow el in geese,
and by zero in sheep; the genitive *s; the verbal endings, s for the singular
present tense forms, ing for the present participle, ed and the various
‘strong’ verb forms as in hit, hidden, caught, sold, for the past tense and past
participle; and the adjectival er and est o f the comparative and superlative
forms. Derivational and inflectional processes alike involve a relation
 12 MO D E R N E NGLI SH W O R D - F O R M A T I O N

between the members o f a pair, consisting o f the ‘unmarked’ base form

and the ‘marked’ affixed form. In the case o f inflectional pairs this is a tw o-
w ay relation: the existence o f a singular (countable) noun necessarily
implies that o f its plural form, and (usually) vice versa; and almost every
verb has a present and a past participle. W ith derived words, on the other
hand, though the affixed form presupposes a base from which it was con­
structed, the reverse is not necessarily the case. The fact that w e have formed
unclean on the familiar pattern o f negative tw -+ adjective base does not
mean that w e can do the same w ith dirty.
Affixes operating as inflections are stable in function and meaning.
Plural s and past tense ed (or their variants) have the same significance
whatever their context. This is often not the case with derivational affixes,
though semantic predictability, and productiveness - the potential ability
to appear in a great many words - tend to go together. Affixes like - ness,
forming abstract nouns from adjectives, or -er, forming agent nouns from
verbs, which are very productive, are also markedly stable in meaning.
M any derivational affixes, however, have more than one meaning and can
be added to more than one category o f base words. Notice the difference
between - able added to a verbal base: allowable = ‘ can be allow ed’, and
to a nominal one: knowledgeable = ‘ having know ledge’, companionable —
‘ fitted to be, behaving like, a com panion’.
Both inflectional and derivational affixes are ‘ grammatical’ rather than
‘ lexical’ elements. The ‘ grammatical’ elements o f the language, which
m ay be words or affixes, form groups which are relatively small, and
stable in membership, compared w ith the ‘ lexical’ classes o f nouns,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs, which are large and much more subject to
the addition o f new members and the loss through obsolescence o f old
ones. Grammatical items may be members o f a system, like the personal
pronouns, or the determiners, a, the, this, that, these, some; every and so on.
The members o f a system have complementary functions and are inter­
dependent, so that any change - the addition or subtraction o f one mem­
ber - would have an effect on the group as a whole. It is usual to think o f
‘ lexical’ elements as characterized by specific meanings, while ‘ gram­
matical’ elements have rather general significations, but this somewhat
vague distinction is only useful as a rough generalization. It is helpful to
think o f ‘ lexical ’ and ‘ grammatical ’ as opposite poles: inflections, pro­
nouns, determiners are nearest to the ‘ grammatical’ pole; prepositions are
less ‘ grammatical’, and not so distant from the ‘ lexical’ pole. T h ey form
a much larger, less tightly organized class, whose members may have over­
lapping functions and are not so closely dependent on one another; and
 T HE W O R D 13

their number may be increased from time to time - notably by the forma­
tion o f the com plex prepositions referred to in 1.4.
Similarly, the class o f derivational affixes is much larger than that o f the
inflectional affixes, its members are less interdependent, and new ones
emerge now and then. Derivational affixes tend to be much less generalized
in meaning than inflectional affixes, though there is considerable variation
in this respect, -er and -ness are rather general in m eaning: this characteristic
too is associated with productiveness, since a more specialized suffix
would not be suited to a very wide range o f contexts. Contrast the rather
more ‘ lexical’ and much more restricted suffixes -iana, as in Johnsoniana,
meaning something like ‘ a collection o f the notable sayings of, or objects
associated with . . . ’, -ese, as in computerese, officialese, meaning ‘jargon,
language peculiar to . . .’ and -esque, as in Romanesque, Rembrandtesque,
meaning ‘ in the (artistic) style o f . . .\
Finally, the function o f inflections is to indicate relationships between
w ords: the addition o f an inflection to a word in a sentence is not a matter
relevant to that word alone. Contrast a cow eats grass with cows eat grass:
w e choose the verbal forms eats or eat according to whether the subject
noun is singular or plural, and w e should not want to say that eats and eat
are different words: they are different forms o f the verb to eat. Deriva­
tional affixes, on the other hand, are not dependent in this w ay on the form
o f other words in the sentence: their function is to signal the formation o f
new words. The addition o f -er to the verbal stem eat, for example,
produces the noun eater, taking nominal inflections and behaving just like
other nouns.
The behaviour o f genitive ’s needs special notice. W hen it refers to a
w ord which is part o f a noun phrase, it is usually attached, not to that word,
but to the last one in the group. W hen plural 5, or any other affix, be­
haves like this, it shows that the group has become unified into a single
lexical item, for example in jack-in-the-boxes, a devil-may-care-ish attitude,
do-nothingism, he extract-of-beefed his bread.8 This is not so with the genitive.
In the man in the brown coat's newspaper, the free phrase the man in the brown
coat has a word-like role in this context only. The function o f 9s here is
not relevant to the w ord to which it is attached; it links the following
head word, newspaper, w ith the structure prem odifying it, in a certain
relationship. From this point o f view , the ’s is rather more like a preposi­
tion than an inflection. Jespersen in fact suggests that w e call it an ‘ inter­
position’ and drop the apostrophe, writing for example, the man in the
brown coat s newspaper, to show that the s belongs equally to its preceding
and follow ing structures (1918, §§144-5).