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
Old English phonology fronting of the open vowel to in certain cases. It also underwent vowel shifts that were not shared with Frisian: smoothing, diphthong height harmonization, and breaking. Diphthong height harmonization and breaking resulted in the unique Old English diphthongs , , , . Palatalization yielded some Modern English word-pairs in which one word has a velar and the other has a palatal or postalveolar. Some of these were inherited from Old English ("drink" and "drench", "day" and "dawn"), while others have an unpalatalized form loaned from Old Norse ( and ). Old English had four major dialect groups: Kentish, West Saxon,