Everyone knows the English language is changing. Every three months, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) publishes updates to its online dictionary. One recent update contained 900 new words, new expressions, or new meanings for existing words. But where do they all come from?
New words are created in many different ways. We can make a new word by combining two words, like gastropub (gastronomy + pub), vlog (video + blog) or emoticon (emotion + icon). Sometimes we put two words together in a new way, for example road rage or toy boy.
We also find that nouns can change into verbs. Take the word text. Text was always a noun (from about 1369, according to the OED), but it is now very common as a verb, to text somebody. Other new words already existed but with a different meaning. For example, tweet was the noise that a bird makes, but now we use it more often (as a verb or a noun) for a message that people put on the social networking site Twitter.
Another way in which we make new words is by ‘adopting’ words from foreign languages, like barista or latte (imported from Italian when coffee bars became really popular in the UK in the 1990s), or patio or siesta (taken from Spanish).
A lot of new words come from the names of brands or companies, for example we skype each other and we google a word. We also need more general words to describe new technology or new gadgets: wi-fi, ringtone, and smartphone are some recent examples; or new technological ways of behaviour, like cyberbullying, or the most recent twalking (talking + walking) which refers to distracted walking while texting.
The invention of new words is not a new phenomenon. The word brunch (breakfast + lunch) first appeared in 1896, newspaper (news + paper) in 1667, and English speakers started to use the word café (from French) in the late 19th century. The difference now is how quickly new words and expressions enter the language and how rapidly we start to use and understand them.
Source: Adapted from 900 new words in 3 months, Oxford University Press
Related article: New English Words
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