English word formation: a table for reading unfamiliar words without a translator

A colleague writes in a work email: We underestimated the time. Can we reschedule? I’ll email the update to all trainees.

You paste five words in a row into a translator. Email read, a minute gone. Yet the translator was not needed. Each of the five is built from a simpler word you already know.

English happily makes new words out of existing ones. The mechanism is called word formation. Once you see how it works, you read a long word in pieces, like taking apart a construction set.

How many ways of forming words are there in English?

You have already met almost all of them in your colleague’s email. Cambridge Dictionary names four main kinds of word formation: prefixes, suffixes, conversion and compounds. A fifth is worth adding: shortening also produces new words.

• A prefix goes at the front and changes the meaning: usual → unusual.
• A suffix goes at the end and often changes the part of speech: employ → employer.
• Conversion moves a word into another part of speech without changing its form: an email → to email.
• Compounding joins two words into one: back + ache = backache.
• Shortening keeps only part of a word or name: examination → exam.

First, take the email apart yourself

Go back to the email at the top. Split three words into parts: underestimated, reschedule, trainees. What does each part add? Answer for yourself before reading on.

The answers. Under- means “too little”: the time was underestimated. Re- adds “again”: the meeting is being set again. -ee is a little trickier. An employer hires; an employee is hired. In the same way a trainee is the person being trained. So the email is addressed to the interns.

That leaves email and update. Neither has a suffix, yet both have changed part of speech.

Word formation table by part of speech

Spot -ment or -tion at the end? You are almost certainly looking at a noun, and you can tell before you translate. Compounds, according to Cambridge Dictionary, exist in every part of speech.

British spelling ends these verbs in -ise: prioritise, organise. American spelling gives prioritize. Prefixes add meaning: multipurpose, overtime, misunderstand, co-worker.

Can email be a verb?

It can. Cambridge Dictionary gives email as its example of conversion: the noun becomes a verb with no suffix and no change in spelling.

Both sentences are correct. The second is simply shorter. Learners at B1–B2 often do not believe it is allowed. So they write the first even when replying to a colleague who wrote the second.

Work vocabulary is full of such verbs. You can chair a meeting or host it. You can schedule a call, budget for costs and text a colleague. Who’s chairing the meeting? asks who is running it.

It works the other way round too. Verbs give nouns with no suffix: an update, a download, a fix. So the update in the email simply means the latest news about the meeting.

Compounds: one word, two words or a hyphen?

Every word has its own form. Nail polish is written as two words, short-sighted with a hyphen, eyelashes as one. A new compound often starts as two words. Once people get used to it, it gains a hyphen or closes up. Doubt is normal here. Cambridge’s guide to compounds says it plainly: If you’re not sure … a good dictionary will tell you.

The structure itself is simple: two words produce a third with a new meaning. Work email is full of them: deadline, workload.

Most often two nouns are glued together: earphones. An -ing form plus a noun gives parking ticket, a verb plus a noun gives rescue team. An adjective plus a noun gives blackboard. The stress usually falls on the first part: EARphones, BLACKboard.

Compound verbs are far less common. They usually come from an existing noun: a daydream gives to daydream.

You need a hyphen after a prefix (post-war) and after a single capital letter (U-turn, X-ray). You also need one in a compound adjective before a noun: a well-known speaker, an angry-sounding email. Numbers make the rule most visible.

One letter has gone. Before a noun, two-hour works as an adjective, so it takes a hyphen and no plural. Cambridge’s own example is the same: a twelve-hour flight. Ukrainians often write a two-hours meeting here, because in their head they hear «дві години».

Photo, exam, memo: shortenings you already use

You say photo and exam every day. So you already know one way of forming words. It is called clipping: only the beginning of a long word survives.

Photograph becomes photo, examination becomes exam, memorandum becomes memo. Advertisement gives advert or the very short ad. And in a café nobody orders decaffeinated: they ask for a decaf.

Shortenings made from first letters are pronounced in two ways. HR, CEO and PC are read letter by letter. NATO and radar are said as ordinary words, and these are called acronyms. New acronyms are written in capitals. Familiar ones drift into lower case over time: radar, scuba.

There is also a purely written type: Dr, Mr or km are short only on paper and read out in full. The same family includes ASAP and FYI, the ones you meet most often in work email.

When splitting a word lets you down

Splitting a word into parts is often quicker than looking it up. But a prefix can mislead. Re-form means “form again”. Reform without a hyphen means “change for the better”. Same parts, different words, and only the hyphen tells them apart.

For anyone taking an exam, the marks here are real: word formation is part of Use of English in Cambridge B2 First.

Open your last work email

Find three long words in it. Split each one: what comes first, what comes last, what word is left in the middle. Then check your guess in a dictionary.

One familiar word unlocks several more this way. Behind employ stand employer and employee; behind schedule stands reschedule. If you want someone other than a dictionary to check those guesses, work through English grammar with a teacher.

And the next time your colleague underestimates the time, at least you will know what their apology is made of.