Every year, new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the definitive reference for English vocabulary for over a century. These words might be slang terms that have become commonly used, additional definitions for existing words, or entirely new words that have been created to keep up with our ever-changing world. The process of getting a word accepted for inclusion takes time. For example, you’ve probably heard someone say “I’ll google that when I get home” – meaning “I’ll use the Google search engine to look that up on line.” Google (the product) became available in 1998; google (the verb) was added to the OED in 2006.

However, new words are created and used daily by people all over the English-speaking world, whether those words are officially part of the English language or not. English is a very flexible language, and there are many ways to create a new word. Here are four examples of ways new words are created:

• by adding a suffix
• by adding a prefix
• by compounding two or more words together
• by creating new definitions of, or uses for, existing words

Adding a Suffix

A suffix is one or more letters (as a group, these are called an affix) added to the end of a word (called the root) to make a new word that has a meaning that can be related back to the original root word.

The word aerobicized was added to the OED in 2009 as an adjective meaning “made fit or in shape due to aerobic exercise.” This word was created by adding the suffix -ize (meaning “to make”) to the word aerobic. Other examples of words created using this suffix include harmonize (to make harmonic), emphasize (to make emphatic), and modernize (to make modern).

Adding a Prefix

A prefix is an affix that is put on the beginning of a word to create a new word.

The OED added the word upskill in 2009 as a verb meaning “to teach someone new skills” – that is, to “up” their skill level. The prefix up- is used as a prefix in many words, including upscale, upstream, and uphold, all with the sense of directing something upwards. Another common prefix is re- (meaning “again”) as demonstrated in the words reprint, redo, and reload.

In the next post, we’ll look at two more methods of creating new English words: compounding and redefinition.