ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the range of complex words to which give the general name of blends. The words in this list may appear at first sight to be a miscellaneous collection, but all of them may strike the reader as being unusual in some way. In general, however, morphemes can be identified easily enough. The most central and productive word-formative processes, compounding and derivation, are concerned with combinations of established morphemes and groups of morphemes. New words like bounce-back, unput-downable, stratoscope are new combinations of familiar morphemes, each of which makes a more or less constant and predictable contribution to new contexts. It is difficult to estimate how important a part phonaesthemes play in the formation of words. It shows for various languages that often the names of things or concepts which are likely to be connected in the minds of speakers have developed some corresponding likeness of form.
