Etymologie, Etimología, Étymologie, Etimologia, Etymology, (griech.) etymología, (lat.) etymologia, (esper.) etimologio
UK Vereinigtes Königreich Großbritannien und Nordirland, Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte, Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande du Nord, Regno Unito di Gran Bretagna e Irlanda del Nord, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, (esper.) Britujo
Kurzwort, Acortamiento, Troncation, Troncamento, Clipping, (esper.) Clipping

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bbc.co.uk
Packet of cigarettes and paper clipping
(W3)

Packet of cigarettes and paper clipping

A man from Fareham in Hampshire was given the box of cigarettes when he was in hospital in Wei Wie, in China, during the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Mr George Holden told the local newspaper: "I was a cook in a ship carrying troops to China. While we were there I was taken ill with fever and spent 31 days in hospital. A nurse gave me them and I have kept them ever since."

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burger - hamburger
cello - violoncello
(W3)

The word "burger" is to "hamburger" as the word "cello" is to what?

Answer: "violoncello"

The word "burger" was derived from the word "hamburger" and "cello" was derived from "violoncello" by a process of language change linguists call "fore-clipping".

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canal - canalis
canalis, lat.
channel
back channel
diplomatic channels
secondary channel
chanel, frz.
Coco Chanel
canna, lat.
cannoli
cannon
canyon
caramel
Karamell, dt.
kanna, griech.
qaneh, hebr.
qanah, arab.
(W3)

...
John Kelly, May 30, 2017

The word "channel" may have a secret "back channel" to a Semitic or Arabic root. ...
Proper channels

English sets up the word "channel" in the early 1300s. Back then, though, it didn’t refer to any line of communication, as "channel" originally named the "bed of a stream". Metaphor quickly went to work: Later in the 1300s, "channel" was naming other waterways (think "English Channel") as well as various tubular passageways for liquids. Come the mid-1500s, "channels" were flowing with information and news, hence "diplomatic channels". The word lent itself to the circuits transmitting telegraphs in the 1840s, then to TV frequencies in the 1920s.

A "back channel", meanwhile, first described a "secondary channel" of water in the 1740s, especially one that forms an island in a stream of river, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED cites a secret "communications back channel" by the 1960s, which expression appears to be an independent construction on the basis of "official diplomatic channels".

Channel No. 5?

Via the Old French "chanel", "channel" comes from the Latin "canalis", used for various "conduits for water", from drains and gutters to, like the early "channel", "beds" of "rivers". The ancient Romans, like modern English speakers, also extended "canalis" to other tube-like things, such as grooves in wood or stone or passages in the body.

As for that French "chanel"? Yes, apparently the French surname "Chanel" — as in the high fashion brand founded by "Coco Chanel" — originally referred to professional "pipe"-fitters.

"Canalis", you may be noting, looks a lot like another channel-like waterway: "canal". Indeed, "channel" and "canal" are what etymologists called doublets, two different forms of the same root, as we recently saw with "scandal" and "slander".

In the case of "canal", English borrowed it directly from the Latin "canalis" in the early 1400s, "clipping" off the ending. A canal named a "pipe" or "tube" before it’s more familiar sense of a "man-made waterway", attested in the late 1500s.

Working through the channels

..., but the word "channel" may ultimately have a "back channel" with Semitic or Arabic roots. Latin’s "canalis" is based on "canna", a "reed" or "cane". ("Cane" itself comes from "canna", which also yields "cannoli", "cannon", "canyon", and, possibly, "caramel" [dt. "Karamell"].) Latin, in turn, borrowed "canna" from the Greek "kanna", which etymologists suspect is related to or from the Hebrew "qaneh" or Arabic "qanah", also naming a "reed" or "cane". Etymology, as ever, knows a thing or two about foreign affairs.
...

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Clipping
clip
klippa, schwed.
klippe, dän.
Klippe, dt.
clippe, mndl.
Kliff, dt.
klif, mnd.
cliff, engl.
klif, isl.
klev, schwed.
Klei, nordd.
*glei-, ide.
kleben, dt.
Kleister, dt.
Klee, dt.
Klette, dt.
klettern, dt.
Kleid, dt.
klein, dt.
Kolben, dt.
*gel-, idg.
glía, griech.
Leim, dt.
Kleister, dt.
gloiós, griech.
glej, slaw., russ.
(W3)

• "clipped" cut or trimmed by clipping
• "clipping" the act of clipping or snipping
• "newspaper clipping" an excerpt cut from a newspaper or magazine
• "press clipping" an excerpt cut from a newspaper or magazine
• "scrapbook" an album into which clippings or notes or pictures can be pasted
• "shearing" removing by cutting off or clipping

Wie lautet die Übersetzung von "clipping" in Deutsch?

clipping

clipping - Ausschnitt

NOUN a clipping | clippings

VERB to clip | clipped | clipped

clipping | clips

SYNO clip | clipping | cutting | newspaper clipping | press clipping | press cutting | snip | trim | trimming

clipping, noun

• the act of a person or thing that clips.
• a piece clipped off or out, especially an article, advertisement, etc., clipped from a newspaper or magazine.
• clipped form.

clipping, adjective

• serving or tending to clip.
• Informal. swift. - a clipping pace.

Etymology - Origin of clipping

1300–50; Middle English. See "clip"

Clip­ping, das

clipping(n.1)

early 13c., "a clasping, an embracing," verbal noun from clip (v.2). As a U.S. football penalty (not in OED), from 1920.

Clipping or Cutting Down from Behind. — This is to be ruled under unnecessary roughness, and penalized when it is practiced upon "a man obviously out of the play." This "clipping" is a tendency in the game that the committee is watching anxiously and with some fear. [Collier's, April 10, 1920]

clipping(n.2)

early 14c., "a cutting, act of shearing off," verbal noun from clip (v.1). Sense of "a small piece cut off" is from late 15c. Meaning "an article cut from a newspaper" is from 1857.

clipping n.: (UK Und.) posing as a prostitute, taking the money, but escaping before intercourse takes place.
...

clipping adj.1

clipping adj.2

clipping adv.

clippings of tin n.

"talon-clipping charm"

A charm used for dragon care.

References from the canon

Harry found this spell in a book in the Hogwarts library when researching ways to overcome the Hungarian Horntail in the first task (GF20).

clipping

clipping

clipping

affix-clipping, noun : metanalysis

First Known Use: circa 1960

Time Traveler: The first known use of affix-clipping was circa 1960

See more words from the same year "1960"

clipping, noun

: something that is clipped off or out of something else

grass clippings

especially : an item clipped from a publication

First Known Use: 15th century, in the meaning defined above

See more words from the same century "15th century"

• clipping bureau
• clippingly
• clipping service

inclip, verb - "inclipped"; "inclipping"; "inclips", transitive verb : clasp, enclose

First Known Use: circa 1616, in the meaning defined above

See more words from the same year "1616"

press clipping, noun

chiefly US : something (such as an article or a picture) that has been cut out of a newspaper or magazine

unclip, verb - unclipped; unclipping, transitive verb

: to detach or unfasten from a clip

First Known Use: 1874, in the meaning defined above

See more words from the same year "1874"

Limericks on clipping

Shakespeare concordance:

Winter's Tale [V, 2]

Third Gentleman, Line 3151

Then have you lost a sight, which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenances of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour. Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries 'O, thy mother, thy mother!' then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with "clipping" her; now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten conduit of many kings' reigns. I never heard of such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and undoes description to do it.

• grass clippings - das gemähte Gras
• nail clippings - abgeschnittene Nägel
• newspaper clipping - Zeitungsausschnitt, Clipping (fachspr)
• clipping (Nachweissammlung für die Effizienz von PR-Maßnahmen) - Clipping
• clipping LING - Kurzwort
• press clipping - Zeitungsausschnitt

I. clip SUBST

• (ammo) clip (detachable magazine) - Magazin
• at a fast clip - mit einem Affenzahn ugs
• bag clip - Beutelclip
• bicycle clip - Hosenklammer, Veloklammer, Fahrradklammer, Flügelklammer [o. Halteklammer] [mit Feder]
• bulldog clip MED - Verbandsklammer
• clip (fastener) - Clip, Klipp
• clip (for wires) - Klemme
• clip - Ausschnitt, Clip, Hieb, Klipp, Klips, Ladestreifen, Schlag, Schneiden,- Tempo
• clip earring - Ohrklipp, Ohrklips
• clip joint - Nepplokal
• clip of a dog - Trimmen
• clip of a sheep - Scheren
• clip-art - Clipart
• clip-clop - Klappern, Klippklapp
• clip-clop of hooves - Getrappel
• clip-on (bow-tie) - Selbstbinder (veraltend)
• clip-on (sunglasses) - Sonnenschutzgläser zum Aufstecken
• clip-on - Klips
• clip-on earring - Ohrklipp, Ohrklips
• clip-on sunglasses - Sonnenschutzgläser zum Aufstecken
• hair clip - Haarspange
• paper clip - Büroklammer

II. clip VERB trans

• to get a clip round the ear - eins hinter die Ohren bekommen ugs
• to clip sth together papers, documents - etw zusammenklammern [oder: zusammenheften]
• to give a hedge a clip - eine Hecke schneiden
• to clip a dog - einen Hund trimmen
• to clip a hedge - eine Hecke stutzen
• to clip one's nails - sich Dat die Nägel schneiden
• to clip sheep - Schafe scheren
• to clip a ticket - ein Ticket entwerten
• to clip sth - etw verkürzen
• to clip sth record - etw unterbieten
• to clip one's words - abgehackt sprechen, Silben verschlucken
• to clip sth to sth - etw an etw Akk anheften
• to clip sth - etw streifen
• to clip sb's ear - jdm eins hinter die Ohren geben
• to clip the edge of the kerb - die Bordsteinkante streifen
• to clip sb's wings übtr - jdm die Flügel stutzen
• to clip sth on - etw mit einem Klipp befestigen
• to clip sth out - etw ausschneiden
• clip-clop - klappern
• clip-on - ansteckbar

"clipping"

Transportation Management (TM)

A calculation method the system uses to calculate charges by working through all scales level by level, even if the value lies outside the scale. The system totals up the calculation results from each scale level to produce the overall result. For "clipping", one scale item must have a relative calculation type.

(1:09) : Domestic Horse (Equus Caballus) - close-up sound of clipping and filing a pony's hoof. Neighs from other ponies in background. Chat from people.

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Clipping - Beispiele
(W3)

Clipping (morphology)

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Clipping (Morphologgy)
Auto
Automobil
Straße
via strata
street
Bus
fromage
formaggio
caseus formaticus
(W3)

• End-Clipping
• Initial-Clipping
• Medial-Clipping
• Complex-Clipping

"Clipping" is an even more wide-spread way of creating new stems. The odd thing about "clipping", however, is that the newly clipped word usually continues to exist alongside the original, so "doc" and "doctor" coexist, "phone" and "telephone" don't seem to get in each other's way. The same applies to "TV" and "television", "bio" and "biology", "math" and "mathematics", and so on. Another interesting thing about "clipping" is that we don't seem to care much which end of a word we clip. We clip the end of "rep(resentative)", "prof(essor)", "sub(marine)", "prep(are)", and "phys(ical) ed(ucation)", but the beginning of "(tele)phone", "(cara)van", "(tele)scope", "(ham)burger". Sometimes we clip both ends! Where do you think we get "(re)fridge(rator)" and "(in)flu(enza)"?

Sometimes clippings do replace their base form. "Cab(riolet)" seems to have stuck, as has "(cara)van". I doubt we go back to the full form of "(aero)plane", from the Greek compound meaning "gliding on air". But clipping is maistly, I mean, mostly (didn't know I could type that fast!) the result of our effort to talk as fast as we think in a society so complex that many simple ideas can only be expressed by long words or phrases. Just as we often clip one activity to get on to another, we clip the words we speak.

We know that clippings are new words, or stems, because they undergo derivations. The clippings for "Chevrolet" and "Cadillac" immediately underwent diminutivization to become "Chevy" and "Caddy", just like "pup" becomes diminutive "puppy" because pups are small. Of course, they all pluralize, too; "profs", "fridges", "burgers" present no problems. So clippings are new stems from which other words may be derived.

CLIPPING, CLIPPED FORMS, CLIPPED WORDS

These are respectively the process of cutting off the ends of words and the shortened words that result. Philologists usually distinguish between "clipped forms", which have lost the rearmost parts of the original words, and "aphetic forms", which have lost their fronts. In that distinction, "fan" is a clipped form of "fanatic", "pike" an aphetic form of "turnpike". But the terms "clipping" and "clipped form" are also used generically for the cutting off of either end of the original word. Usually these abbreviations begin as slang ("deli" from "delicatessen", and "psych", "math", "soc", and "chem" on nearly every college campus), but lasting clipped forms frequently become Informal ("flu", from "influenza") or even Standard ("bus", from "omnibus"). See ABBREVIATIONS; APHERESIS; APHESIS; JARGON; SLANG.

"back clipping", noun

a word formed by omitting the last part of the form from which it is derived.

"fore clipping", noun

a word formed by omitting the first part of the form from which it is derived.

French / English Glossary of Linguistic Terms

"clipping" - French "troncation"

Related Term(s):

• abbreviated form
• abbreviation
• reduction
• shortening

Friday, 9 April 2010

Clipping

A taximeter cabriolet sped over the tar Macadam towards the zoological gardens where it swerved to avoid a perambulator and hit a mobile vulgus of musicians in periwigs who were unable to play their pianofortes and violoncellos for the next fourteen nights, much to the disappointment of their fanatics.

The cutting of a word is called "clipping". An imaginary prize for the best sentence with forgotten topiary.

He never saw it coming

Update: It turns out that "syncope" is only the removal of a word's internal parts. Title changed. Posted by M.H. Forsyth at 12

Shortening or Clipping

Clipping (or truncation) is a process whereby an appreciable chunk of an existing word is omitted, leaving what is sometimes called a stump word. When it is the end of a word that is lopped off, the process is called back-clipping: thus "examination" was docked to create "exam" and "gymnasium" was shortened to form "gym".

Less common in English are fore-clippings, in which the beginning of a word is dropped:

thus "phone" from "telephone".

Very occasionally, we see a sort of fore-and-aft clipping, such as "flu", from "influenza".

Elizabeth's gotten a snipping
To Liza by fore-and-aft clipping.
Influenza's just flu ;
The word fridge shows it too.
I'd go on, but this tale's less than gripping.

"French fried potatoes" became "fries".

clipping:

• (countable) A piece of something removed by clipping.
• (countable) An article clipped from a newspaper.
• (countable, linguistics) A short form (of a word) created by removing syllables.
• (uncountable, signal processing) The process of cutting off a signal level that rises above a certain maximum level.
• (uncountable, computer graphics) The use of a mask to hide part of an object or image.
• (UK, slang, obsolete) Excellent; very good.
• (uncountable, American football, Canadian football) Falling, rolling, or throwing one's body on the back of an opponent's legs after approaching from behind.
• (uncountable, linguistics) A process of word formation involving shortening by removal of syllables, often terminal ones.
• (countable, linguistics) A short form (of a longer word) created by removing syllables, often terminal ones.
• (countable, journalism) An article clipped from a newspaper (especially) or from a magazine.
• The act by which something is clipped (in any sense).

Morphology
...
• Word formation processes can be either productive or lexicalised (non-productive). There are different types of word-formation such as "compounding", "zero derivation" ("conversion"), "back formation" and "clipping".
...

7 "Abbreviations"

An increasingly popular method. There are three main subtypes: "clippings", "acronyms" and "initialisms". Some words that you might not have known started out longer are "pram" ("perambulator"), "taxi"/"cab" (both from "taximeter cabriolet"), "mob" ("mobile vulgus"), "goodbye" ("God be with you"), "berk" ("Berkshire Hunt"), "rifle" ("rifled pistol"), "canter" ("Canterbury gallop"), "curio" ("curiosity"), "van" ("caravan"), "sport" ("disport"), "wig" ("periwig"), "laser" ("light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"), "scuba" ("self-contained underwater breathing apparatus"), and "trump" ("triumph". Although it’s worth noting that there’s another, unrelated sense of "trump": "to fabricate", as in "trumped-up charge").

In linguistics, "clipping", also called "truncation" or "shortening", is word formation by removing some segments of an existing word to create a diminutive word or a clipped compound. "Clipping" differs from "abbreviation", which is based on a shortening of the written, rather than the spoken, form of an existing word or phrase.

"Clipping" is also different from "back-formation", which proceeds by (pseudo-)morpheme rather than segment, and where the new word may differ in sense and word class from its source.

In English, "clipping" may extend to "contraction", which mostly involves the elision of a vowel that is replaced by an apostrophe in writing.
...

...
The noun "champers" is composed of: [UK, 1945 — upper-class slang for "champagne"}

• – the first syllable of the noun "champagne";
• – the suffix "-ers" (also "-er"), used to make jocular formations on nouns, by clipping them — cf. the noun "soccer" and quotation 3 below.

...

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cockamamie
décalcomanie
decalcomania
décal
(W3)

"cockamamie"

In the middle of the 19th Century "decals" became a "mania" in Victorian Britain, so much so that the Brits borrowed a French word, "décalcomanie" = "mania for tracings" to describe it. The French word is made up of the prefix "de-" = "from", "off" + "calquer" = "to copy", "trace", plus the French word for "mania", "manie". So what has this "cockamamie" story to do with the word under discussion? "Cockamamie" is, in fact, nothing but the result of folk etymology working over "décalcomanie". (By the way, "decal" is a "clipping" or "shortening" of the same French word.)

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Corner Clipping

(W3)

4.3. Corner Clipping

Although border images are not affected by border-radius, other effects that clip painting or event handling to the border, padding, or content edge must clip to their respective curves. For example, backgrounds clip to the curve specified by background-clip, overflow values other than visible to the curved padding edge (when overflow on both axes is not visible), replaced element content to the curved content edge, pointer events to the curved border edge, etc.

Note: As border-radius reduces the interactive area of an element authors should make sure the remaining interactive area conforms to recommended minima for the platforms they target; in particular, conforming to recommended minimum touch target sizes may require larger widths and heights when border-radius is used.

This example adds appropriate padding, so that the contents do not overflow the corners. Note that there is no border, but the background will still have rounded corners.

DIV {
    background: black;
    color: white;
    border-radius: 1em;
    padding: 1em }

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dailywritingtips - CF
20 Clipped Forms and Their Place (If Any) in Formal Writing
(W3)

20 Clipped Forms and Their Place (If Any) in Formal Writing

by Mark Nichol

Clipped forms, shortened abbreviations of words, have a checkered history. Some are acceptable in formal writing, and others aren’t. When writing in academic contexts, in business writing, or another formal environment, take note of the status of these common clipped forms:

• 1. "Ad": In formal writing, the full form, "advertisement", is usually employed.
• 2. "Bra": This clipped form of "brassiere", from the French word for "bodice" (its euphemistic meaning: "arm protector"), has supplanted the longer form in all but the most stiffly formal writing.
• 3. "Burger": If ever a reference to this fast food staple makes its way into formal writing, the short form of "hamburger" is just as likely to appear as the long form.
• 4. "Bus": "Omnibus" (Latin for "all"), a word for a horse-drawn public-transportation conveyance, gave the right of way to its short form around the time such vehicles became motorized.
• 5. "Copter": The full form, "helicopter", is best for formal writing.
• 6. "Deli": Though this word has been in use for at least a half century, "delicatessen", from the German word for "delicacies", is best for formal usage.
• 7. "Exam": "Examination" was clipped back in the late 1800s and has long since been used even in formal writing.
• 8. "Flu": The short form of "influenza" (Italian for "influence", from the medieval supposition that illness was the result of celestial perturbations) is several hundred years old and has long been acceptable even in formal medical texts.
• 9. "Fridge": This term, unusual not only in that the full form, "refrigerator", has been clipped at both ends but also in that the spelling has been altered to reflect the pronunciation, is suitable for informal writing only. ... frz "frigidaire" is used generically, just as "kleenex" and "xerox" and other brand names are employed to refer to all products of that type, and that "fridge" is a slang term for that brand of refrigerators.
• 10. "Gas": "Gasoline" is much more likely to appear in formal writing than its clipped form.
• 11. "Gator": This clipped form of "alligator", in spite of its nearly 200-year-old tenure in the English language, is considered slang.
• 12. "Gym": Most formal references to a school building for athletic activities will use the full form, "gymnasium", which many patrons might be amused to learn stems from the Greek word for "naked", because athletes in ancient Greece trained and competed nude. Because Greek gymnasiums were centers of intellectual education as well, the full term is often used in Europe to refer to what might in the United States be called a "preparatory school" (which, by the way, has its own clipped form: "prep school").
• 13. "Memo": So pervasive is this clipped form of "memorandum" that many people may not even know its origins. (The full word ultimately derives from the Latin for "memory".)
• 14. "Movie": Even more taken for granted than "memo" is this diminutive form of "moving picture", which, if you step back from it, may appear silly looking and juvenile. Formal writing often refers to the medium as film or cinema, but movie is also acceptable.
• 15. "Phone": The original term, "telephone", is still often used in formal writing, but the clipped form is just as likely to be used.
• 16. "Plane": Plane has become as acceptable as "airplane" in formal writing.
• 17. "Pro": "Professional", the full form, is the preferred usage in formal contexts.
• 18. "Quake": This clipped form of "earthquake" is, despite long usage, still considered informal.
• 19. "Tie": The full form, "necktie", is all but obsolete. (Perhaps the clothing accessory will be, too, before long.)
• 20. "Typo": This slang for "typographical error" is over a century old but is still considered substandard usage.

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dailywritingtips - WC
Word Clipping
(W3)

Word Clipping

by Maeve Maddox

Shortened forms of words like rhinoceros (rhino), synchronization (sync), and limousine (limo), common in conversation and informal writing, are usually used in their entirety in formal contexts.

These shortened words are called clippings. Sometimes a clipping drives out its longer original and becomes a standard word in its own right.

Some standard English words that began as clippings are:

• taxi: a shortening of Taximeter, a device for measuring distance and figuring the fare.
• cab: a shortening of cabriolet, a light two-wheeled chaise drawn by one horse. Later the word was applied to a motorized vehicle. Note: The word taxi-cab combines two clippings.
• lunch: a shortening of luncheon, a word documented from 1580. Although lunch is documented as early as 1829, it was still considered to be vulgar a century later. Luncheon is still around, but it has acquired something of a precious connotation.
• bus: a shortening of omnibus. Classical Latin omnibus means “for all.” As a term for a public transportation vehicle, omnibus was borrowed from French. The wealthier classes had enjoyed the services of carriages for hire as early as the 17th century. The omnibus offered inexpensive public transportation to the masses.
• plane: a shortening of aeroplane/airplane.

Words are clipped from front, back, or both ends.

Back clipping - Most clippings keep the front part of the word, dropping the remaining syllables:

• chimpanzee > chimp
• synchronize > sync
• examination > exam
• gasoline > gas
• memorandum > memo

Some clippings change the spelling of the first syllable in order to keep the desired pronunciation. For example, the shortening of business is spelled biz because severed from business, the syllable bus is pronounced like the word for the vehicle.

The shortened form mike for microphone has been in the language since 1911. Beginning in the 1960s, the use of the abbreviation “mic” on electronic devices began to be confused with the word mike. As an abbreviation under an audio port, “mic” is a useful space-saver. It fails as a spelling, however, because mic rhymes with Bic.

Fore-clipping - Some shortenings drop the beginning of the word:

• robot > bot
• parachute > chute
• cockroach > roach
• telephone > phone

Middle Clipping - In middle clipping the middle of the word is retained:

• refrigerator > fridge
• influenza > flu
• pajamas > jammies

Only time will tell which of the current shortened words so popular in social media will stick to the language.

Here are some linguistic terms related to word formation by clipping:

apocope: The cutting off or omission of the last letter or syllable/s of a word: pic from picture, vocab from vocabulary.

apheresis: omission of one or more sounds or letters from the beginning of a word: possum from opossum.

syncope: contraction of a word by omission of one or more syllables or letters in the middle, like ma’m from madam, specs from spectacles, and fo’c’sle for forecastle.

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dailywritingtips - WS
Word Subtraction
(W3)

Word Subtraction

By Sharon

We all know you can form new words by adding existing words together, such as combining "boat" and "house" to make "boathouse" or "houseboat". But did you know that a lot of common words are also formed by "subtraction" or taking a piece away from a longer word?

The linguistic term for this is "clipping". It means shortening an existing word to form a new word. The clipped form has the same meaning as the original word and becomes a word in its own right, rather than an abbreviation. This means it can be combined with other words to form compounds

Here are some examples of clipped forms

• biopic - biographical picture
• bra - brassière
• burger - hamburger
• bus - omnibus
• cello - violoncello
• exam - examination
• flu - influenza
• fridge - refrigerator
• gas - gasoline
• gym - gymnasium
• lab - laboratory
• math - mathematics (clipped to maths in British English)
• memo - memorandum
• mob - mobile vulgus (fickle crowd in Latin)
• movie - moving picture
• pants - pantaloons
• phone - telephone
• piano - pianoforte
• plane - airplane
• pram - perambulator
• sitcom - situation comedy
• tie - necktie
• typo - typographical error

There are lots more, of course, but these are clipped forms that have more or less replaced the longer original in everyday speech.

"§"
dockers - boondockers
(W3)

"§"
feck - effect
feckless - effectless
feckful
member - remember
bout - about
feck
effect
efficere, lat.
facere, lat.
ex, lat.
cunt
Gropecuntelane
cunnus, lat.




(W3)

Mashed Radish - Etymology at the intersection of news, life, and everyday language.

What is the "feck" in "feckless"?

John Kelly, June 1, 2018
...
Forceful words

Etymologically, "feckless" is "effect-less". The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) attests the word in 1586 in Scottish dialect for "valueless", "futile", or "feeble", later evolving to "lacking vigor or character" or "irresponsible". Many sources credit Scotland’s Thomas Carlyle for popularizing the term.

Older yet is "feckful", evidenced in the 1560s for "powerful" or "effective" — and a form we’ve sadly lost.

Best we know, the "feck" in "feckless" is shortened from "effect". "Clipping" off an unstressed initial syllable is called "aphesis", something we do in everyday speech all the time, e.g., "member" for "remember" or "bout" for "about".

Also from Scottish English, "feck" is recorded first as "the feck", or "the bulk", in the 1480s, then as just "feck" for "value", "efficacy", or "energy" in the 1490s. This has no relation to the Irish "feck", a minced oath for "fuck", as Stan Carey explains and which Terrence Patrick Dolan’s Hiberno-English dictionary first records in 1989.

"Effect", for its part, emerges in the late 14th century, borrowed from French, where it ultimately comes from the Latin "efficere", "to bring about" ("facere", "do", plus "ex", "out of").

As for "cunt", the word has a long and complicated history, and the intensity of the vulgarity isn’t evenly felt across the Englishes of the word, as profanologist Michael Adams discusses on Strong Language.

The OED observes that "cunt" is first found in place-names, such as "Gropecuntelane" in Oxfordshire (ca. 1230), referring to where the brothels were found. No, you just can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Referring to "female genitals", the coarse force of "cunt" was in feck felt by 15th century, when the names for body parts were especially taboo, and rendered yet more offensive by the 19th century when the term totalized a woman, especially as a sexual object.

"Cunt"’s etymology is obscure. With cognates in the Germanic languages and remarkably similar to the Latin "cunnus" meaning the same, Anatoly Liberman suggests a nasalized form of "kut", like "cut". Others have proposed a connection to the Latin "cuneus", "wedge", and a variety of Proto-Indo-European roots meaning something "slashed" or "hollow". I don’t think I need to parse any of these connections out for you.

For more on the history of "cunt", see Green’s Dictionary of Slang. For more on its sociolinguistics, visit the Strong Language blog. And for more on "feckless", see Nancy Friedman’s considerations from its political buzz in 2012.

"cunt" n.

[orig. ME but taboo since 15C. "Cunt" itself, ‘a nasty word for a nasty thing’, as Grose (1788) dismisses it, appears as ‘C--t’, although he offers roots in the Gk "konnos" and the Lat. "cunnus", and lists the Fr. synon. "con" (which has been linked by Fr. ety. to Lat. "culus", the "anus" and hence Fr. "cul"). A. Liberman (http://blog.oup.com/2012/01/origin-of-the-c-word/) suggests a nasalised version of Germanic "kut", which itself links to SE "cut" (an image behind a number of terms for "vagina").
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Search Results for: "cunt"

"§"
grammarbook.com - CS
Clipping Syllables to Sizes We Like
exam - examination
flu - influenza
gym - gymnasium
gas - gasoline
math - mathematics
sitcom - situation comedy
bot - robot
Beth - Elizabeth
fridge - refrigerator
frige - refrigerator
cablegram - cable telegram
chute - parachute
sci-fi - science fiction
mic - microphone
lab - laboratory
(W3)

Today I went to the doctor's office for an "exam" because I thought I might be getting the "flu". I skipped going to the "gym" after that. I stopped for "gas" and went home. Beth wanted me to help with her "math" homework, but I fell asleep watching a "sitcom".
...
While some people might prefer the extra formality and articulation in the second version, we're guessing the majority would prefer the first. That is because it applies a popular linguistic technique: "clipping".

"Clipping" is the reduction of a multisyllabic word to form a new one without changing the original meaning or part of speech. The clipped word represents the bigger word while making it easier to write, spell, and say.

"Clipped words" differ from "abbreviations", which are often punctuated in representing the longer word ("Feb." for "February"), and from "contractions", which drop one or more letters to form the new word (don't for do not).

When they are first coined, "clipped words" typically do not gain prompt acceptance for formal usage. They more often circulate as colloquialisms until their utility and staying power become well established.

One example is the clipping of the word "bot" from "robot". According to dictionary.com, "robot" originated in the play R.U.R. in 1920. "Robot" remained intact until the clipped word "bot" surfaced between 1985 and 1990 and eventually gained entry into dictionaries.

Clipping typically involves one of four types: initial, final, medial, and complex.

• Initial clipping clips syllables from the start and keeps the final part of a word, as with "bot" from "robot" and "Beth" from "Elizabeth".
• Final clipping, the most common type, clips syllables from the end and keeps the start of the longer word, as with "exam" from "examination" and "gym" from "gymnasium".
• Medial (middle) clipping, the least common type, combines initial and final clipping to form words with the middle component intact (e.g., "flu" from "influenza", "fridge" from "refrigerator" [the middle component’s spelling is adjusted from "frige" to "fridge" to ensure proper pronunciation]).
• Complex clipping involves combining and shortening phrases, as with "sitcom" from "situation comedy" and "cablegram" from "cable telegram".

Being informal, most clipped words are formed through a communal process, particularly in the age of condensed communication within texting and social media. More-formal arenas such as academia, the sciences, and professional publishing will likely continue to eschew many such conveniences at first, but over time they too will find themselves aboard the "bus" — "omni-bus", we mean.

Using what you've learned in this article, identify the type of clipping applied to each word.

• 1. "chute" from "parachute" [final clipping / initial clipping / complex clipping]
• 2. "sci-fi" from "science fiction" [final clipping / initial clipping / complex clipping]
• 3. "mic" from "microphone" [final clipping / initial clipping / complex clipping]
• 4. "lab" from "laboratory" [final clipping / initial clipping / complex clipping]

"§"
krysstal.com
clipped forms
(W3)

Words Created By Subtraction Or Addition
...
Many common words have been shortened from the original term as in the table below.

Modern Word Original Form

• bra - brassière
• bus - omnibus (Latin: for everyone)
• exam - examination
• gym - gymnasium
• knickers - knickerbockers
• lab - laboratory
• mob - mobile vulgus (Latin: fickle crowd)
• petrol - petroleum (Greek: rock oil)
• pram - parambulator

"§"
ku.de
clipping
(W3)

3.5. By the same token, "clippings" ("ad", "lab", "maths", etc.) cannot be included in the WordFormation Component. First, word-formation deals with coining new naming units, new signs. Clipped words, however, are not new signs. They preserve the same meaning as their corresponding full forms. Hence, it is the mere process of form-reduction rather than the naming process which takes place. Wolfgang U. Dressler holds the same position; he does not include the formation of abbreviations among synchronic WFRs by emphasizing that (a) these result from diachronic changes and (b) there is no change in word-formation meaning (Dressler et al. 1987: 106-107). Klaus Hansen refers to them as “bloße Umformungen bereits vorhandener Lexeme” and “stilistisch markierte Wortvariante” (Hansen et al. 1982: 146).

Secondly, "clipping" is a highly unpredictable and irregular process. As such, it cannot be considered a word-formation process. Any changes of this kind bear on the ready-made naming units, and therefore take place in the Lexicon. This is not to say that "clippings" — in the same way as other units stored in the Lexical Component — cannot function as WF bases. Examples are numerous: "flu-epidemic", "phone-call", "pre-fab structure", "pop-art", etc. This is, however, a different question which has no effect upon the conclusion that "clippings" do not result from word-formation processes.
...
13.2.2. I propose to explain “exocentric compounds” by a two-step process in which only the first has word-formation relevance. The first step consists in the formation of an auxiliary, onomasiologically complete (i.e. with both the base and the mark included), naming unit. The second step is based on mere elliptical shortening. Certainly, shortening is not a wordformation process (see above the comments on "clippings"). Therefore, this type of naming units can be analysed on a par with the underlying “full”, auxiliary, version, although the latter has not come to be used (institutionalised).
...
The next paragraph is dedicated to "clippings": “Clippings are forms from which a part has been cut off. They are not always semantic innovations, but often purely formal phenomena” (Dirven/Verspoor 1998: 67). Here it can be argued that other word-formations are not combined with semantic innovations either. Compounds, derivations etc. can also be created as synonyms to already existing words (e.g. African American beside Afro-American). Finally, as regards blends, Dirven/Verspoor recognize that this process not only encompasses a formal, but also conceptual blending: "brunch" is a combination of "breakfast" and "lunch".
...
6.6. Clippings

In contrast to Blank, I think that "clipping" does not result from a contiguity of linguistic signs, but from a contiguity of parts of linguistic signs. The big difference between ellipsis and "clipping" is that the former requires a deletion of morphemes, the latter only a deletion of morphs. The oldest records of "clippings" in English language history are from the second half of the sixteenth century: "coz" for "cousin" 1559, "gent" for "gentleman" 1564, "mas" for "master" 1575, "chap" for "chapman" 1577 and "winkle" for "periwinkle" 1585 (cf. Marchand 1969: 448; cf. also Biese 1941). Wermser (1976) unfortunately did not include "clippings" (or blendings) in his diachronic study, so that this is still a research gap to be filled; but for more recent decades the studies of Cannon (1987) and Algeo (1980) show that "clippings" play a rather minor role — at least in written English. The lists of “Among the New Words” show the same results. For the years 2000 and 2001 the lists include only two examples, namely "endo" from "end-over" ‘bicycling accident in which the rider flies over the handbars (among mountain-bikers)’ (Glowka et al. 2000: 76) and — with a diminutive ending — Milly ‘dance promoted and commissioned by Chicago city officials for the new-millennium fatigue syndrome’ (Glowka et al. 2000: 331). Commonly known are the following examples: "(tele)phone", "mike" ("mikrophone"), "porn(ographical film)", "op(tical) art", "(py)jam(a)". The etymons are no longer generally known for "movie" ("moving picture"), "deli(catessen)" and "sitcom" ("situation comedy").
...

"§"
merriam-webster.com
Shortening or Clipping
(W3)

"Clipping" (or "truncation") is a process whereby an appreciable chunk of an existing word is omitted, leaving what is sometimes called a "stump word". When it is the end of a word that is lopped off, the process is called "back-clipping": thus "examination" was docked to create "exam" and "gymnasium" was shortened to form "gym". Less common in English are "fore-clippings", in which the beginning of a word is dropped: thus "phone" from "telephone". Very occasionally, we see a sort of "fore-and-aft clipping", such as "flu", from "influenza".

"§"
pants - pantaloon
(W3)

"pants"

Clothing worn from the waist down have a separate sleeve for each leg.

A "clipping" of "pantaloon" from Italian "Pantalone", a silly old buffoon in the Italian Comedia dell'Arte, who wore spectacles, baggy breeches and stockings. He was named for the patron saint of Venice, "San Panteleone", 4th century Venetian physician, executed for his belief in Christ. "Pantaloons" originally referred to bloomers, baggy underwear worn by women. Later it came to refer to "pants" tied below the knees and worn by men. From there it went on to be shortened to simply "pants" and refer to any sort of trousers.

"§"
pictclipping
(W3)

What is a PICTCLIPPING file?

"PICTCLIPPING" files mostly belong to Finder by Apple. PICTCLIPPING is the filename extension of screenshots, notes, or image files created by the Finder (file manager) on Mac operating system. A PICTCLIPPING file may be created when a user drags an image from a web page to the desktop or when an image is opened directly with Finder instead of a graphics application. The PICTCLIPPING format is also used to save backup copies of iTunes album art extracted by the user. Apart from images, the contents of PICTCLIPPING files can be textual.

"§"
pre-nup - pre-nuptial agreement
prenup - pre-nuptial agreement
(W3)

We often abbreviate words by dropping the endings. There's a technical term for it in linguistics - they're called "clippings". I suppose the word "ad" is the most familiar, from "advertisements". "Pram" is another, from "perambulator", and nobody uses that these days, really.

And now, we've got "pre-nup" which came in in the 1980s I suppose.

It's short for "pre-nuptial agreement" ["Ehevertrag"]. In other words, it's two people who're coming together, and they're going to get married, they're going to have their nuptials, they're going to get married - and because they think the marriage is not going to last for very long and there's going to be a messy divorce, where they're going to have to split all their worldly goods, they decide to have a "pre-nup", which is an agreement, a "pre-nuptial agreement", where they decide who's going to have what, and it's going to save a lot of mess in due course. Funny idea really ... but very popular amongst American film stars apparently.

Well, it isn't modern, actually. The earliest time I ever found any reference to it is 1916. So, it was very common in the United States during the 20th century and is increasing elsewhere. But the "clipping", the abbreviated form, is very recent - I've only heard that since the 1980s. How do you write it? Well some people write it "pre hyphen nup", but increasingly these days they've been dropping the hyphen ["prenup"], and the two elements are written solid, without any space or any hyphen in-between. The words have come together ... not so of course the people they refer to!

"§"
quickanddirtytips.com
How Clipping Makes New Words
clipping
van - caravan
doc - doctor
cab - cabriolet
sub - submarine
za - pizza
spec - speculation
(W3)

Today’s episode is about the linguistic phenomenon called "clipping". Did you know that the word "van" came into existence because the word "caravan" was clipped?

What Is Clipping?

"Clipping" happens when a word becomes shortened because people drop one or more syllables to form a new word. Usually, both the original word and the new clipped word can coexist, as in "doc" and "doctor", although in other cases such as "cab" and "cabriolet", the clipped word replaces the original one. English is full of clipped words such as "sub", from "submarine"; "deli", from "delicatessen"; and "rhino", from "rhinoceros". In episode 391, we mentioned that the funny word "za" is a clipped form of the word "pizza", though "za" doesn’t appear to be in common use except among Scrabble players. This recent example of clipping doesn’t mean that this is a new linguistic phenomenon, however. This way to form new words has actually been around for centuries. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, for example, lists 42 clipped words that are “in current use but with varying degrees of informality.” The earliest one in this list — "spec", from "speculation" — originated in 1794.

"§"
rad
mob
mobile
mobile vulgus
van
bus
wig - periwig
Taxi
taxicab
cab
cabriolet
bae
radical
radix
*wrad-
radish
rutabaga
eradicate
ramify
(W3)

What if I told you that the word "mob" is a trimmed form of the word "mobile" (from Latin "mobile vulgus": "fickle crowd")? That "van" is a sheared-off part of "caravan", "bus" of "omnibus", and "wig" of "periwig"?

Linguists call it "clipping". It works both ways: you can clip the front part or the rear. "Taxi" is short for "taxicab", which is short for "taximeter cab", and "cab" is short for "cabriolet", which is French for a "goat’s leap", from "cabrioler" ("to leap in the air"). If you think your taxi ride is bumpy now, try to imagine how it was back then.

Sometimes clipped forms are respelled, for example, "bae" (short for "baby"/"babe", a term of endearment).

This week we’ll see five terms formed by the process of "clipping". If these clipped forms bother you, don’t let them. You use such words all the time: "ad", "bra", "auto", "bike", "lab", and so on. If your objection is that these clippings are newfangled teen talk, well, each of this week’s words, in its clipped form, has been around since at least the 1800s.

rad

• noun: One who advocates fundamental or far-reaching change or reform.
• adjective: Extraordinary; wonderful; fashionable; hip; cool.

ETYMOLOGY:

From shortening of "radical", from Latin "radix" ("root"). Ultimately from the Indo-European root "*wrad-" ("branch", "root"), which also gave us "radish", "root", "rutabaga" ["Kohlrübe"], "eradicate" ["ausrotten"], and "ramify" ["sich verzweigen"]. Earliest documented use: 1820 for noun, 1976 for adjective.
...

"§"
sil.org
clipping
(W3)

English "clipping"

French "troncation"

Related Term(s):

• abbreviated form
• abbreviation
• reduction
• shortening

"§"
tat - tatty
tat - tattoo
tit for tat
(W3)

"Tat" is my favorite shoddy monosyllable. Although not as popular in North American English as it is in British English, where it originated, "tat" is making usage inroads across the pond too.

A "tat" can be a "rag", "shoddy merchandise", "junk", a "low-born harlot", a "scruffy layabout".

"Tat" is apt and stark.

"What tat!" barks the cruel fashion maven, dismissing some young girl's shabby but delightfully cheeky assemblage of tasteless leftover clothes, heretofore consigned to clothy oblivion and hung inside plastic shrouds in the oubliette of a basement closet.

Word Origin

The still slangy "tat" may be a modern back-formation, perhaps a "clipping" of Old English "tættec" = "a rag", "a tatter" - an Anglo-Saxonism that is also the origin of the adjective "tatty". Synonyms for the colloquial snub "tatty" are scruffy", "untidy", "cheap", "neglected", sometimes "sleazy" and "disreputable".

"Tat" = "Tattoo"

In one newer, unrelated use, "tat" has become an affectionate diminutive for a "tattoo". "Seen Tiffany's tasty new tat? It's a drawing of open baby's lips tattooed around the areolae of both her breasts." These, of course, are the lifestyle choices of persons one would not invite to afternoon tea, lest the eating of your fresh scones be followed by a home invasion.

Why People Get Tattoos

Much pseudoscientific, sociological drivel has been written about tattoo acquisition. I don't think it is at all mysterious. If one has no identity, if one can accomplish nothing early in life, if one's low intelligence and milk-and-cookies-milquetoast personality cannot contrive an identity or at the least cobble together a ramshackle selfhood sometime after puberty, well then - never fear - the feckless, zero-sum doofus can go out and buy an identity and wear it home on a t-shirt. Or the tattoo of frisky sperm on his left testicle may proclaim some brain-stem to be "a, like, totally awesome rebel." Yeah, right. Earth residents are preponderantly moronic and it eliminates the need for I.Q. tests when some of them label themselves with tattoos.

A halfwit tries for an upgrade to nincompoop.

This use and meaning of the monosyllable "tat", as a short form for "tattoo", prevails among American youth. Check the e-gossip below:

This "Tat" Is So Over

February 21, 2009
...
"Tit for tat", used in English since the fifteenth century, is possibly an alteration of "tip for tap", that is, blow for blow, from "tip" meaning "tap" + "tap" = "touch lightly". Employed as noun, adjective and adverb, the phrase implies a retaliatory equivalent given in return for some injury, light or serious. "Tit for tat" nearly always suggests an initial injury, blow, stroke or bad turn.

Citations for "Tat" = Shoddy Goods

1. British novelist Margaret Drabble in Ice Age (1977) uses it dismissively: "She was dressed ... in a horrible collection of "tat" - a long shiny maroon skirt, a baggy flowered blouse, a grey cardigan, and a green cardigan on top of that."

2. Purveyors of "tat" beware: Consumers are onto you

3. That long deleted album ... sounds like a heap of prissy irrelevant whimsical lysergic "tat" with Disney lyrics.

Why ought we to clasp the word "tat" to our damp bosoms? Because English is not a tongue noted for a capacious hoard of vituperative words. We Anglophones are poor in insult words and terms of abuse that excoriate their victims. Yet every modern language needs a quiver of toxic word darts to propel with precision into the foreheads of evildoers and moral slugs. Therefore each new abusive gem merits wide dispersal. We live up to our ears in shoddy goods, peddled by immoral hucksters and con men with no conscience. Let us label them as we meet them. If their product is "tat", say so!

"§"
textclipping
(W3)

"TEXTCLIPPING" files mostly belong to Finder by Apple. TEXTCLIPPING is the filename extension of a document containing a text fragment. The file is generated when a user drags a block or line of highlighted text from a texting program onto the desktop or a different path in Finder. The generation of the TEXTCLIPPING file is a function of the textClipping extension on macOS. The text fragment in a TEXTCLIPPING file can be easily inserted and reused across multiple documents on a computer. A plain text editor on macOS (e.g. TextEdit) can open a TEXTCLIPPING file.

"§"
thehistoryofenglish.com
How New English Words are Created
By Truncation or Clipping
exam - examination
gym - gymnasium
gym - gymnastic
lab - laborator
bus - omnibus
van - caravan
vet - veteran
fridge - refrigerator
bra - brassière
wig - periwig
curio - curious occurrence
pram - perambulator
taxi - Taxameter
rifle -
canter - Canterbury gallop
phone - telephone
burger - Hamburger
mob - mobile vulgus
goodbye - God-be-with-you
hello - whole be thou
don’t - do not
you’re - you are
there’ll - there will
that’d - that would
daisy - day’s eye
shepherd - sheep herd
lord - loaf-ward
fortnight - fourteen-night
USA - United States of America
IMF - International Monetary Fund
OPEC - Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
laser - light amplification by stimulated emmission of radiation
radar - radio detection and ranging
quasar - quasi-stellar radio source
scuba - self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
(W3)

...
By Truncation or Clipping

Some words are shortened or "clipped" forms of longer words

Some words arise simply as shortened forms of longer words ("exam", "gym", "lab", "bus", "van", "vet", "fridge", "bra", "wig", "curio", "pram", "taxi", "rifle", "canter", "phone" and "burger" are some obvious and well-used examples). Perhaps less obvious is the derivation of words like "mob" (from the Latin phrase "mobile vulgus", meaning a fickle crowd), "goodbye" (a shortening of "God-be-with-you") and "hello" (a shortened form of the Old English for "whole be thou").

Leaving aside the common English practice of contracting multiple words like "do not", "you are", "there will" and "that would" into the single words "don’t", "you’re", "there’ll" and "that’d", there are many other examples where multiple words or phrases have been contracted into single words (e.g. "daisy" was once a flower called "day’s eye"; "shepherd" was "sheep herd"; "lord" was originally "loaf-ward"; "fortnight" was "fourteen-night"; etc).

Acronyms are another example of this technique. While most acronyms (e.g. "USA", "IMF", "OPEC", etc) remain as just a series of initial letters, some have been formed into words (e.g. "laser" from "light amplification by stimulated emmission of radiation", "radar" from "radio detection and ranging"); "quasar" from "quasi-stellar radio source"; "scuba" from "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus"; etc).
..

"§"
thoughtco.com - CoS
Clipping or Shortening
(W3)

...
Clipping or Shortening

Some new words are simply shortened forms of existing words, for instance "indie" from "independent"; "exam" from "examination"; "flu" from "influenza", and "fax" from "facsimile".
...

"§"
thoughtco.com - DoC
Definition of Clipping in Linguistics Plus Examples
(W3)

...
Learn About Dropping Syllables From Words to Form New Terms

"Clipping" shortens longer words by removing syllables to make new, simpler words.

"Clipped words" usually keep the meaning of the original words but sound more casual.

Different types of clipping remove syllables from the start, end, or parts of longer words.

In morphology, "clipping" is the process of forming a new word by dropping one or more syllables from a polysyllabic word, such as "cellphone" from "cellular phone". In other words, "clipping" refers to part of a word that serves for the whole, such as "ad" and "phone" from "advertisement" and "telephone", respectively. The term is also known as a "clipped form", "clipped word", "shortening", and "truncation".

A clipped form generally has the same denotative meaning as the word it comes from, but it's regarded as more colloquial and informal. Clipping also makes it easier to spell and write many words. For example, a clipped form may replace the original word in everyday usage — such as the use of "piano" in place of "pianoforte".

Examples and Observations

According to the book, "Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction," Some of the most common products of clipping are names — "Liz", "Ron", "Rob", and "Sue", which are shortened forms of "Elizabeth", "Ronald", "Robert", and "Susan". The authors note that clipping is especially popular in the speech of students, where it has yielded forms like "prof" for "professor", "phys-ed" for "physical education", and "poli-sci" for "political science".

However, many clipped forms have also been accepted in general usage: "doc", "ad", "auto", "lab", "sub", "porn", "demo", and "condo". The authors add:

"A more recent example of this sort that has become part of general English vocabulary is "fax", from "facsimile" (meaning "exact copy or reproduction")." Other examples of clipped forms in English include "biz", "caps", "celebs", "deli", "exam", "flu", "gator", "hippo", "hood", "info", "intro", "lab", "limo" ["limo" - "limousine"], "mayo", "max", "perm", "photo", "ref", "reps", "rhino", "sax", "stats", "temp", "thru", "tux", "ump", "veep", and "vet".
...
"There are also several clippings which retain material from more than one part of the word, such as "maths" (UK), "gents", and "specs" ... Several clipped forms also show adaptation, such as "fries" (from "french fried potatoes"), "Betty" (from "Elizabeth"), and "Bill" (from "William")."

"Clipped words" are not "abbreviations", "contractions", or "diminutives".

True, an "abbreviation" is a shortened form of a word or phrase. But abbreviations often end with a period, such as "Jan." for "January", and are clearly understood to be stand-ins for the full term.

A "contraction" is a word or phrase — such as "that's", a form of "that has" — that has been shortened by dropping one or more letters. In writing, an apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters.

A "diminutive" is a word form or suffix that indicates smallness, such as "doggie" for "dog" and "Tommie" for "Thomas".

Types of Clipping

There are several types of clipping, including final, initial, and complex.

"Final clipping", also called "apocope", is just what the term implies: clipping or cutting off the last syllable or syllables of a word to form the clipped term, such as "info" for "information" and "gas" for "gasoline".

"Initial clipping", also called "apheresis", is the clipping of the initial part of the beginning of the word, also called "fore-clipping", according to the Journal of English Lexicology. Examples of "fore-clipping" include "bot" for "robot" and "chute" for "parachute".

"Complex clipping", as the name implies, is more involved. It is the shortening of a compound word by preserving and combining its initial parts (or first syllables)," says ESL.ph, an online site for learning English as a second language. Examples include:

• "Sci-fi" for "science fiction"
• "Sitcom" for "situation comedy"
• "Grandma" for "grandmother"
• "Perm" for "permanent wave"
• "Shrink" for "head shrinker"

As you see, "clipped words" are not always respectful terms. Indeed, some great literary figures vigorously opposed them, such as Jonathan Swift, who made his feelings clear in the tellingly named "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue", first published in 1712. He saw clipping as a symptom of "barbaric" social forces that had to be tamped down:

"This perpetual Disposition to shorten our Words, by retrenching the Vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the Barbarity of those Northern Nations from whom we are descended, and whose Languages labour all under the same Defect."

So, the next time you hear or use a clipped word, do so knowing that it is considered acceptable in English, but remember that these shortened terms have a long and somewhat controversial history.
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uci.edu
Geometry Junkyard
Usenet Clippings related to discrete and computational geometry
(W3)

These pages contain usenet clippings, web pointers, lecture notes, research excerpts, papers, abstracts, programs, problems, and other stuff related to discrete and computational geometry. Some of it is quite serious, but I hope much of it is also entertaining. The main criteria for adding something here are that it be geometrical (obviously) and that it not fit into my other geometry page, Geometry in Action, which is more devoted to applications and less to pure math. I also have another page on non-geometrical recreational math.

• Junk sorted into piles
• All the junk in one big pile
• New junk
• My own junk

Topics:

• Circles and Spheres
• Coloring
• Compass and Straightedge
• Combinatorial Geometry
• Covering and Packing
• Dissection
• Fractals
• Geometric Models
• Geometric Topology
• Hyperbolic Geometry
• Knot Theory
• Lattice Theory and Geometry of Numbers
• Nearest Neighbors and Voronoi Diagrams
• Origami
• Pentagonal Geometry and the Golden Ratio
• Polyhedra and Polytopes
• Randomness and Geometric Probability
• Rectilinear Geometry
• Spirals
• Symmetry and Group Theory
• Tilings
• Triangles and Simplices
• Width, Diameter, and Geometric Inequalities
• Planar Geometry
• Three-dimensional Geometry
• Many-dimensional Geometry
• Open Problems
• Lesson Plans and Teaching Materials
• Software and Animations
• Miscellanous

All Topics

This page collects in one place all the entries in the geometry junkyard.

Recent Additions to the Junkyard

• These files and pointers have been added to the junkyard or modified since 2011.
• Dérivés de l'hexagone. Art by Jerome Pierre based on modifications to the edges in a hexagonal tiling of the plane.
• Robert Fathauer's Escher-like tesselation art.
• Fractal knots, Robert Fathauer.
• Frustro, a font made of Escherian impossible figures.
• Gavrog, a Java package for visualizing 2d and 3d ornamental patterns with high degrees of symmetry.
• MagicTile. Klein's quartic meets the Rubik's cube, by Roice Nelson.
• Origami proof of the Pythagorean theorem, Vi Hart.
• Seven circle theorem, an applet illustrating the fact that if six circles are tangent to and completely surrounding a seventh circle, then connecting opposite points of tangency in pairs forms three lines that meet in a single point, by Michael Borcherds. see also Borcherds's include Poncelet's porism applet, a similar porism with an ellipse and a parabola and with two ellipses, and more generally with two conics of variable type.
• Sierpinski Hamantaschen.
• Tetrahedra packing. Mathematica implementation of the Chen-Engel-Glotzer packing of space by regular tetrahedra, the densest known such packing to date.
• Wooden ball-and-stick models of Archimedean solids, offered for sale by Dr. B's Science Basics.

My Own Contributions to the Junkyard

• Acute square triangulation.
• Algorithms for coloring quadtrees.
• Box in a box.
• Building a better beam detector.
• Carnival triangles.
• Circular coverage constants.
• Coloring line arrangements.
• Connect the dots.
• Dilation-free planar graphs.
• Dissection and dissection tiling.
• Do buckyballs fill hyperbolic space?
• Edge-tangent polytope
• Equilateral triangles.
• Flat equilateral tori.
• Heesch's problem.
• Hinged dissections of polyominoes.
• Infinite families of simplicial arrangements.
• Labyrinth tiling.
• Lattice pentagons.
• Layered graph drawing.
• Miquel's six circles in 3d.
• My face on a Voronoi Diagram.
• Origamic tetrahedron.
• Paraboloid.
• Proofs of Euler's Formula.
• Pushing disks together.
• Quicktime VR and mathematical visualization.
• The rotating caliper graph.
• Russian math olympiad problem on lattice points.
• Sets of points with many halving lines.
• 75-75-30 triangle dissection.
• Sliced ball.
• Spiral tilings.
• Split square.
• Symmetries of torus-shaped polyhedra.
• Tangencies.
• The tea bag problem.
• Tetrahedra classified by their bad angles.
• Three untetrahedralizable objects.
• Triangles and squares.
• Triangulating 3-dimensional polygons.
• Ukrainian Easter Egg.
• An uninscribable 4-regular polyhedron.
• Zonohedra and cubic partial cubes.

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Web Clipping
(W3)

(v.) Extracting static information from a Web site in order to display the data on a Web-enabled PDA. The idea behind "Web clipping" is to conserve the PDA’s resources by extracting once any static data, such as graphics, logos, photos or even unnecessary text and storing that data on the PDA. The PDA will then make a wireless connection to a Web server in order to retrieve any dynamic content. "Web clipping" is a technology pioneered by Palm for its Palm VII handheld device.

(n.) An excerpt of data taken from a Web server.