back-formation

English

Examples (back-formation)
babysitter → babysit ecolinguistics → ecolinguist

Coined by Scottish lexicographer and philologist James Murray in 1889; from back- +‎ formation.

back-formation (countable and uncountable, plural back-formations)

(uncountable, linguistics) The process by which a new word is formed from an older word by interpreting the former as a derivative of the latter, often by removing a morpheme (real or perceived) from the older word, such as the verb burgle, formed by removing -ar (perceived as an agent-noun suffix) from burglar.
(countable) A word created in this way.
Back-formations, such as "tambour" (for "play the tambourine"), are a staple of comedic wordplay.
Synonym: back-form

linguistic process

Arabic: اشْتِقَاق عَكْسِيّ‎ (ar) m (ištiqāq ʿaksiyy)
Danish: subtraktionsdannelse c
Dutch: terugvorming (nl)
Esperanto: retrodeveno (eo)
Finnish: takaperoisjohto (fi)
French: dérivation régressive (fr) f, dérivation inverse (fr) f, rétroformation (fr) f
German: Rückbildung (de) f
Greek: αναδρομικός σχηματισμός (el) m (anadromikós schimatismós)
Hebrew: גזירה לאחור‎ (he)
Hungarian: elvonás (hu), szóelvonás (hu)
Italian: retroformazione (it)
Japanese: 逆成 (ぎゃくせい, gyakusei)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: tilbakedannelse m, tilbakedanning c
Polish: derywacja wsteczna f
Portuguese: derivação regressiva (pt) f
Romanian: derivare regresivă (ro) f
Russian: обра́тное словообразова́ние n (obrátnoje slovoobrazovánije)
Spanish: derivación regresiva f
Swedish: omvänd ordbildning
Welsh: ôl-ffurfiad m

word formed by this linguistic process