Word formation Word formation In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form. See 'conversion'. There are a number of methods of word formation. A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two words after clipping. An example is "smog", which comes from
Witch (word) Witch (word) The word witch derives from the Old English nouns "wicca" ('sorcerer, male witch') and "wicce" ('sorceress, female witch'). The word's further origins in Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European are unclear. The Old English verb "wiccian" has a cognate in Middle Low German "wicken" (attested from the 13th century, besides "wichelen" "to bewitch"). The further etymology of this word is problematic. It has no clear cognates in Germanic outside of English and Low German, and there are numerous possibilities for the Indo-European root from which it may have been derived. Other suggestions for the underlying root are untenable or widely rejected: