Why Form New Words?

Every day, hundreds of new companies and products are introduced into our global economy, the people behind them hoping, of course, to be successful. In today's highly competitive markets, a new company or product has to catch the attention of potential buyers. One way to do that is to pick names that stand out and are noticed.

Or, you can just make up new words to have fun, your choice.

Some now famous brand names have become part of the English language lexicon, words such as klennex, aspirin, rollerblade, and polaroid. To "google," as in "to google someone," is nearly there itself.

How do I Form New Words?

New words can be invented with no etymological or historical connection at all, or they can be formed, in whole or in part, from language roots. The latter approach is made easier with the use of this site. Simply look up meanings that pertain to your product or the image you would like to present for your company, and try to combine the roots in such a way that the resulting word reads and sounds good while conveying the appropriate, combined meaning.

For example, let's say you have invented a better soap on a stick, perhaps a grainy soap that is good for exfoliation (removing dead skin), and would like a snazzy name for it. You could call it "SoapOnAStick2," but that is long and dull. Looking up the meaning "wash" on this site, you see that possible roots for "wash" are "lau, lav, lot and lut." Hmm, gets you thinking, right? You can complete this exercise if you like, and perhaps you'll come up with an even better new word than our "LavaSoap."

Wikipedia has some other ideas on word formation. If you need more help, public relation agencies and some image consultants are experts at new word formation, and we welcome their use of prefixsuffix.com!

Go to the word root search engine.