Week 1 Vocabulary Preview

acronym

acronym – A word formed from the initial letters or parts of a series of words: WAC for Women’s Army Corps

Affix

affix – a. A word element such as a prefix or suffix, that is attached to a base, stem, or root. b. Something that is attached, joined or added. c. To secure to another; attach.

coinage

coinage – a. The invention of new words. b. An invented word or phrase. c. The process of making coins.

colloquial

colloquial – a. Used in or suitable to spoken language or to writing that imitates speech; conversational. b. Informal in style of expression.

diminutive

diminutive – a. A suffix that indicates small size, youth, familiarity, affection or contempt. b. a nickname indicating affection or familiarity. c. Extremely small; tiny.

metonymy

metonymy – A figure of speech that substitutes a word with a different but closely associated word.

oxymoron

oxymoron – An expression that contains contradictory terms.

palindrome

palindrome – A word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. “mom” “racecar”

portmanteau word

portmanteau word – A word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words; blend.

spoonerism

spoonerism – An accidental but humorous distortion of words in a phrase formed by interchanging the initial sounds: “the tons of soil” instead of “the sons of toil”

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