Shortening in English: Clipping and Blend Identification

Shortening is considered a very productive word-building process. It is the dropping of the part of a word so as to produce a new and shorter word of the same or different meaning. In English, shortenings may be presented by acronyms, abbreviations, initialisms, clippings, blends, and back-formations. Each of them has its own pattern, but it is sometimes difficult to identify a given shortening. The following paper concentrates on the specific word-formation processes “clipping” and “blending”.