21st Century Terminology

• Clipping 


  The creation of a new word with the same word class and denotation by dropping one syllable or more (also called a truncation) e.g., thurs, spec, flu
• Coinage 


  The construction and addition of new words to the word stock
• Collocation


  A recognisable group of words that frequently occur together
• Derivation


  A term used to describe words that are formed by adding affixes to create new words e.g., slow+ness
• Neologism 


  The creation of a word from existing lexical items e.g., electracy - the skills and facility needed to make full use of the communicative potential of new electronic media
• Colloquialism


  An informal word, phrase or pronunciation, often associated with informal speech
• Deixis


  A word or phrase (such as this, those, that) that points to the time, place or situation in which language is being used
• Ellipsis


  The omission of part of a sentence that can be understood by the context
• Register


  A style of language used in a particular context defined in terms of mode, tenor and field
• Acronym

  An abbreviation formed from the initial letters of a words and pronounced as a word e.g., NASA
• Blend


  A word formed combining two or more words to create a new word
• Borrowing


  Introducing a loan word from one language to another
• Code shifting


  When speakers switch between more than one language or variety in a situation
• Double negative


  The use of two negative (words that mean 'no') in the same phrase or clause
• Exclamation


  The tone communicated by the use of an exclamation mark
• Exclamative


  Used to express strong feelings, strong emphasis or emotion
• Filler 


  Words, usually with no semantic value, which are inserted into speech either from habit or to give a participant thinking time as they search for a word
• Initialism

  A word formed from the first letters of a sequence of words pronounced letter by letter
• Logogram

  When graphic units are associated with words/actions e.g., emoticons, x etc
• Non-standard


  Language that does not conform to the standard prestige form which is used as a linguistic norm
• Obsolete words


  Words that are no longer in use
• Semantic change


  Changes in word meaning over time