Definition:
The process of forming a new word (a neologism) by extracting actual or supposed affixes from another word; shortened words created from longer words. Verb: back-form (itself a back-formation). See also: Etymology.
Etymology:
Coined in 1897 by James Murray, the founding editor of the Oxford English DictionaryExamples and Observations:
- singular noun pea from the older English plural pease
- the verb burgle from the older English noun burglar
- the verb diagnose from the older English noun diagnosis
- "Alan Prince studied a girl who . . . was delighted by her discovery that eats and cats were really eat + -s and cat + -s. She used her new suffix snipper to derive mik (mix), upstair, downstair, clo (clothes), len (lens), brefek (from brefeks, her word for breakfast), trappy (trapeze), even Santa Claw. Another child, overhearing his mother say they had booze in the house, asked what a 'boo' was. One seven-year-old said of a sports match, 'I don't care who they're going to verse,' from expressions like the Red Sox versus the Yankees."
(Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. HarperCollins, 1999) - "Back formation continues to make a few contributions to the language. Television has given televise on the model of revise/revision, and donation has given donate on the model of relate/relation. Babysitter and stage manager have given babysit and stage manage for obvious reasons. More remote was the surprising lase fron laser (the latter an acronym for 'lightwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation'), recorded from 1966. The French word liaison came into English with its modern meaning 'interrelation' in the early nineteenth century; a liaison officer is the go-between who represents one military group to another."
(W.F. Bolton, A Living Language: The History and Structure of English. Random House, 1982)
Pronunciation: BAK for-MAY-shun
