Monday, January 12, 2009

Blog + Derivations = Blogivations

It is amazing how many words are created on a daily basis; and many, if not the majority, of these words are derived by the combining of morphemes (see last Thursday's post). Most people know that the word blog is a combination of the words web and log. What people may not know is that there are 214 derivations of the word blog listed in the Oxford English Corpus (according to Newsweek's recent review of the book "Damp Squid"). Actually, this Newsweek article was dated December 22, 2008, so there are certainly more derivations by now. The examples listed in Newsweek were: blogstipation, bloggocks, and blogospherical.

Some other interesting blog-derived words are:

blogebrity

blogophile

blogoholic

blogernacle

bloghogging

blogiarism

bloginity

blogfly

And, of course - blogivations

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Blogernacle looks like a Quebecois curse word.

Anonymous said...

'weblog' and 'blog' are both borrowed by Persian. There are indeed derivations of these in Persian, such as '(we)blognevis ((we)blog writer)' and '(we)blognevisi' ((we)blog writing). If you consider derivations of (we)blog in languages other than English who have borrowed the word '(we)blog', your statistic will amount to thousands if not millions.

Laura Payne said...

Thanks for the info. I did not know they were borrowed from Persian. Very interesting.

Tess Kincaid said...

Blogernacle! I love that one. Thanks for stopping by Willow Manor today. I also love words and must come back to visit you often!

Anonymous said...

Hey Laura,
I said 'borrowed by Persian' rather than 'borrowed from Persian'. The word 'weblog' was borrowed by Persian from English.

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