Though the Dutch were only a passing political presence in America, their linguistic legacy is immense. From their earliest days of contact, Americans freely appropriated Dutch terms – blunderbuss (literally “thunder gun”) as early as 1654, scow in 1660, sleigh in 1703. By the mid-eighteenth century Dutch words flooded into American English: stoop, span, coleslaw, boss, pit in the sense of the stone of a fruit, bedpan, bedspread (previously known as a counterpane), cookie, waffle, nitwit (from the colloquial Dutch Iknietweet, meaning “I don’t know”), the distinctive American interrogative how come? (a literal translation of the Dutch hoekom), poppycock (from pappekak, “soft dung”), dunderhead, and probably the caboodle in kit and caboodle.Bryson (1994) Tracing back the beginnings of some words can unveil funny to outlandish reasons for allocating certain signifiers to certain signified. Nonetheless, people show no difficulty coping with these new words (neologisms). It is, therefore, paramount to explore the basic processes governing the creation of new words.Etymology: it is the study of the origin and history of a word, a term which, like many other technical terms, has Greek origins (étymon‘original form’ + logia ‘study of’). Looking back at the etymology of less technical words, one can discover diachronic processes which enable a new word to enter a language. Some words were unwelcomed, and were considered as ‘barbaric’ and ‘debasing’. In English, many outcries resulted from the introduction of words like ‘handbook’ ‘aviation’. Another view for the constant inclusion of new words is to regard language as dynamic, and that constant evolution is a reassuring sign of vitality and creativeness. Coinage: one of the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage, that is, the invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for commercial products that become general terms (usually without capital letters) for any version of that product. New words based on the name of a person are called ‘eponyms’. Famous examples are sandwich (from the eighteenth century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his bread and meat together while gambling). Other terms are technical, such as Fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit).
