back-formation

back-formation on Wikipedia

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Coined by Scottish lexicographer and philologist James Murray in 1889; from back- +‎ formation.

back-formation (countable and uncountable, plural back-formations)

(uncountable, linguistics) The process by which a new word is formed from an older word by interpreting the former as a derivative of the latter, often by removing a morpheme (real or perceived) from the older word, such as the verb burgle, formed by removing -ar (perceived as an agent-noun suffix) from burglar.
(countable) A word created in this way.
Synonym: back-form

Back-formations, such as "tambour" (for "play the tambourine"), are a staple of comedic wordplay.

linguistic process

Arabic: اشْتِقَاق عَكْسِيّ (ar) m (ištiqāq ʕaksiyy)
Danish: subtraktionsdannelse c
Dutch: terugvorming (nl)
Esperanto: retrodeveno (eo)
Finnish: takaperoisjohto (fi)
French: dérivation régressive (fr) f, dérivation inverse (fr) f, rétroformation (fr) f
German: Rückbildung (de) f
Greek: αναδρομικός σχηματισμός (el) m (anadromikós schimatismós)
Hebrew: גזירה לאחור (he)
Hungarian: elvonás (hu), szóelvonás (hu)
Italian: retroformazione (it)
Japanese: 逆成 (ja) (ぎゃくせい, gyakusei)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: tilbakedannelse m, tilbakedanning c
Polish: derywacja wsteczna (pl) f
Portuguese: derivação regressiva (pt) f
Romanian: derivare regresivă (ro) f
Russian: обра́тное словообразова́ние n (obrátnoje slovoobrazovánije)
Sorbian:
Upper Sorbian: naspjetna deriwacija f
Spanish: derivación regresiva f
Swedish: omvänd ordbildning
Vietnamese: phái sinh ngược
Welsh: ôl-ffurfiad m

word formed by this linguistic process

English