AQA A-level English Language – Language Change Practice Test

Back-formation happens when a new word is created by removing something that looks like an affix from an existing word. Think of turning an apparent agent noun like editor into a shorter verb edit, as if the suffix -or is something that can be dropped to form a new word. A familiar example is babysitter becoming babysit, where the -er is removed to yield a verb. This shows how speakers reinterpret a word’s structure and create a new form by stripping away what looks like an affix.

This isn’t about translating a phrase into another language (that would be a calque), nor about borrowing a word from another language (a loanword), nor about losing meaning (semantic bleaching). It’s specifically about forming a new word by removing an affix, which is exactly what back-formation describes.