univerbation
/ˌjuːnɪvɜː(ɹ)ˈbeɪʃən/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The diachronic process of forming a new single word from a fixed expression of several words.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Lexicalization and grammaticization compared In Section 3, it was pointed out that there are two kinds of lexicalization which can be usefully compared with grammaticization, i.e. fossilization and univerbation. The discussion and examples in this section will be confined to the more general and widespread of these two types, i.e. univerbation (the emergence of new lexical entries from collocations), primarily in order to keep the presentation simple and straightforward."
- "Standard examples of univerbation are cupboard, brainstorming, or necklace."
- "This process is referred to as univerbation. An example from English is the word notwithstanding, which derives historically from the word not and the participle withstanding. In modern English it counts as a single word, namely, as a preposition, as in the prepositional phrase notwithstanding his request (compare the ungrammatical withstanding his request). Further examples are the conjunction because from Middle-English bi + cause 'by cause of', parallel to French par cause […]"
- "The two suppletive pronominal paradigms *se/o- ~ *te/o- ‘that’ and *i-/ei̯- ~ *e/o- ‘this’ are continued in many IE [Indo-European] languages, both as simplicia and as univerbations with other pronouns and adverbs[.]"
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: univerbation, verbum, -ation