Many words are derived from the basic store of words in the language through a limited number of processes, called in general derivation:

1. Prefixes are added at the beginning of the word to create a word with an added meaning: ‘re-’ is added to get ‘re-do’, ‘replay’, ‘refurnish’ and ‘refinance’; we are no longer conscious of the prefix in earlier creations ‘relate’, ‘redemption’, ‘refrain’ etc. Other prefixes include: ‘post-’ (‘postnatal’, ‘postpone’); ‘in-’ (‘input’, ‘insure’); ‘ex-’ (‘expatriate’, ‘ex-Prime Minister’), and many others. In some cases, the original form is now lost or extremely rare:‘disgruntled’ (‘gruntled’?), ‘uncouth’ (‘couth’?), except in jokes by for example P.G. Wodehouse: 'he was far from being gruntled’. Popular recent prefixes are ‘e‑ as in ‘email’ and ‘i‑’ as in ‘i-pod’.

2. Suffixes are added at the end of words with similar effects. ‘-ness’ (‘happiness’, ‘blackness’); ‘-al’‘arrival’, ‘partial’], ‘-ite’ (‘Blairite’, ‘socialite’). However in English suffixes are also used grammatically, sometimes as grammatical inflections such as ‘-s’ (‘books’) or ‘-ed’ (‘liked’, ‘waited’), at other times to show the grammatical class of a word; ‘sad’ is an adjective: add a ‘-ly’ and you get an adjective ‘sadly’.

3.  Compounds are made by adding two words together to get a new word with a distinctive meaning: ‘tea’ + ‘time’ gives ‘teatime’, ‘back’ + ‘scrub’ gives ‘backscrub’, ‘coal’ + ‘black’ gives ‘coalblack’ etc. The meaning links between the two words are not always the same: a ‘goldfish’ is coloured gold but a ‘goldsmith’ isn’t; ‘uphold’ is to ‘hold up’ but ‘upbeat’ is not to ‘beat up’; and so on

5. Infixes occur in the middle of words, which is extremely rare in English: the only convincing example being ‘absobloominglutely’ and ‘kangabloomingroo’ (substitute your favourite swear-word for ‘blooming’. The rapper Snoop Dogg is famous for putting ‘izz’ or ‘izzle’ into words: ‘hizzouse’ (house), ‘ahizzead’ (‘ahead’)

Derivation will obviously attract writers who like to play with words. See if you can guess the creators of the following:

 Answers: Coupland (4, 8, 11), Pratchett (1, 6), Wodehouse (3, 10), Burgess (2, 5, 7, 9)

Infixes  Blends  Reduplicatives

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