Trendy Blends: A New Addition to English Lexicon

Abstract

New words are created in our society everyday due to several reasons. It is important to understand the processes by which new words are formed. The processes traditionally identified may not adequately account for the formation of some neologisms; they [may] need updating. Among the traditionally-identified word-formation processes, blending is the most common. Some of the trendy blends are mostly derived from commercial trade names or advertising, science and technology, or simply a desire to be clever, witty, or facetious. In this paper, I will be discussing a number of trendy new blends, focusing on those which have violated the traditional rules of blend formation. For example, netizen, a variant of citizen, is the result of the amalgamation of Internet and citizen. Here, the word net, a [front-] clipping of Internet, and the last part of citizen, (it)izen, are combined. The use of such blending has become so frequent that these new processes should be recognized and accepted as new rules. Generally, the established rule of blending is that the first part of one word is added to the last part of another word, and the new word formed conveys the combined meaning of the two words. However, this is patently no longer the only way to blend words into a neologism. Therefore, if the new rules were added to the old one, the study of neologisms would become a little easier for learners.