ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY

5.9 Clipping

 

In contradiction to the eighteenth century British English purism, the American English of the nineteenth century reveled in the process of clipping. Clipping is a process of word-formation which shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables, thus retaining only a part of the stem, e.g., lab (laboratory), bra (brassière), bus (omnibus), car (motorcar), and mob (mobile vulgus). Clipping is synonymous to shortening, so these terms will be used interchangeably.

Various classifications of shortened words have been offered. The generally accepted one is that based on the position of the clipped part. According to whether it is the final, the initial, or the middle part of the word that is cut off we distinguish initial clipping (aphaeresis), and medial clipping (syncope), final clipping (apocope).

• Aphaeresis: the loss of one or more letters at the beginning of a word: story (history), cello (violoncello), phone (telephone).

• Syncope: the loss of one or more letters in the interior of a word: specs (spectacles), aphesis (aphaeresis).

• Apocope: the loss of one or more letters at the end of a word: ad (advertisement), ed (editor), fab (fabulous), prof (professor), and gym (gymnastics or gymnasium).

In some cases, speakers do not even realize that a particular word is the product of clipping; for example, the word zoo was formed from zoological garden.