Back-Formations

Partake in some fun as we explicate this process

Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulonge, c. 1618-20 (public domain - Google Art Project)

“DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.” — Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Back-formation is the process of shortening words and creating new words by removing part of the word. The back-formation typically has an additional or sometimes opposite meaning from the original word.

The portions of the words that are removed are called affixes, such as such as -un, -ation, anti-, pre- etc. 

James Murray, the primary editor of The Oxford English Dictionary, first coined the term in 1889 from the definition of burgle, which was back-formed from burglar.

When we hear back-formations used in sentences, the words seem familiar yet strange. We immediately understand their meaning because of our familiarity with the original word, but there might be something a little off about others.

The humor writer P.G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves, picked up on this and employed it perfectly in The Code of the Woosters in 1938:

“If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

Still, there are some words that we probably don’t even realize are back-formations because they’ve become so accepted into our vocabulary.

Words like resurrect (from resurrection), diagnose (from diagnosis), or kidnap (from kidnapping).

But some people bristle when -ize or -ify are added. Randomize, incentivize, and legitimize might make your skin crawl, although baptize, memorize, and prioritize have become (ahem) normalized. Unless you’re British, of course.

What about redundant back-formations? That is, a back-formation created for a word that already exists. For example, orientate from orientation when we already have orient. Or administrate from administrator, when we already have administer.

Perhaps we can free-associate and hustle our way to intuit some back-formations. Let’s try not to injure ourselves as we steamroll our way to scavenge words for this surreal process. It’s perfectly natural to have a peeve or two about these words; you’re not obligated to use any of them. You’re free to nitpick to your heart’s content as you manipulate, ameliorate, isolate, or curate words as you donate them to your vocabulary so you can utilize them when you orate.

If you’re not gruntled about this, I hope you’re at least enthused. Or perhaps simply whelmed.

There’s so much to learn,