Word formation

Word formation comprises linguistic processes that create new words or modify existing ones, including compounding, derivation, and conversion.

Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit that carries meaning or grammatical function. Word formation combines or changes these units to build words.
Compounding: A word-formation process that combines two or more bases into a compound word. It forms words such as “toothbrush” by joining independent bases.
Borrowing (linguistics): The adoption of a word or linguistic feature from another language. Borrowing adds words from other languages rather than forming them from native material.
Neologism: A newly coined or newly established word or expression. Neologisms are visible outcomes of word-formation processes.
Root (linguistics): The core lexical element of a word, to which affixes may be added. Roots provide the base to which many word-forming affixes attach.
Derivation: A word-formation process that creates lexemes by adding affixes to a base. It produces related words such as “happy” and “happiness.”
Sound symbolism: A relationship in which a word’s sound is associated with aspects of its meaning. Sound associations can shape new vocabulary without relying on a morphological process.
Productivity (linguistics): The degree to which a linguistic pattern can be used to form new expressions. Productivity explains why some word-forming patterns readily generate new words.
Affix: A bound morpheme attached to a base, typically as a prefix or suffix. Affixes create words by attaching to roots or other bases.
Conversion (linguistics): A word-formation process that shifts a word to a new grammatical category without changing its form. It creates verbs such as “to email” from the noun “email.”

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