User:Mmorourke/Word formation

Blending
A lexical blend is a complex word typically made of two word fragments. Some examples are smog, which comes from smoke and fog, and brunch, from breakfast and lunch.

Acronym
An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of other words. Some examples are NASA for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and ATM for Automated Teller Machine. Though they are usually written entirely in capital letters, some words originating as acronyms, like radar, are now treated as common nouns. Calque

A calque is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation. For example, the English phrase to lose face is a calque from the Chinese "丟臉/丢脸".

A subcategory of calques is the semantic loan, that is, the extension of the meaning of a word to include new, foreign meanings.