Definition and Examples of Back-Formation In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word (a neologism) by removing actual or supposed affixes from another word. Put simply, a back-formation is a shortened word (such as edit) created from a longer word (editor). Verb: back-form (which is itself a back-formation). Also called back-derivation. The term back-formation was coined by Scottish lexicographer James Murray, the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until 1915. As Huddleston and Pullum have noted, There is nothing in the forms themselves that enables one to distinguish between affixation and back-formation: its a matter of historical formation of words rather than of their structure (A Students Introduction To English Grammar, 2005).
