General explanations (continued)

Derivatives

This term is used for any word which has been formed by the addition of a suffix to a main word also treated in this Dictionary (also, more rarely, by the alteration or removal of the suffix of a main word). Derivatives may be regarded as occupying a half-way position between, on the one hand, combinations (arising out of syntactical relationships between words determined chiefly by their semantic reference) and, on the other, inflected forms (whose existence and form, with the exception in English of a limited set of irregular inflexions, are predetermined by the system of grammar). In other words, a very considerable number of the derivatives recorded are predictable and transparent: as, for example, the many adverbs formed by the addition of -ly from adjectives, the similarly derived abstract nouns in -ness, and the agent-nouns in -er, most of which are thrown up by syntactic transformations. So 'he is insufficiently motivated', 'a fashioner of sonnets', 'the coolness of our reception' are closely linked with 'his motivation is insufficient', 'to fashion sonnets', 'we had a cool reception'. On the very borderline with the inflexional system lie the verbal substantives and participial adjectives, ending in -ing and -ed, which are indistinguishable in form, and often in function also, from the corresponding gerunds and participles. At the other end of the scale there are small groups of derivatives incorporating uncommon suffixes, which have emerged or have been coined in much the same way as combinations (with which, indeed, they may be interchangeable). At the extreme, we find slang and journalistic formations such as those ending in -ville (Squaresville) or -aholic (workaholic), which resemble combinations in their raison d'être.

The necessity for the separate treatment of those derivatives which are actually homomorphic with regular inflected forms, such as the verbal substantives and participial adjectives, or whose incidence is so regular and natural as to amount almost to the status of inflexion, such as the adverbs formed with -ly or agent-nouns in -er, might almost be denied, on the grounds that the senses of the derivative are deducible from those of the parent word. But in fact the occurrence of even the obviously formed derivatives, and the relationships of their senses with the root words, is very often unpredictable and complex; and the suffixes by which they are formed cannot be tidily separated into two groups, according to whether their application is transparent and regular or not. It is, therefore, the practice of the Dictionary to register every recorded derivative, and to accord it such treatment as its own meaning and use necessitate. The majority of derivatives entered in the Dictionary will be found as main words in their own right, but linked through the cross-references employed in their etymologies, and frequently also in their definitions, to the main words on which they are formed.

Derivatives which are of infrequent occurrence, or which have only one sense, or only a few senses straightforwardly related to those of the root word, are usually treated in a separate paragraph at the end of the article for the parent word. They are printed in the same small, dark bold type as combinations, and are usually introduced by 'Hence' (signifying formation on, and chronological succession to, the root word), 'So' (implying derivation but not posteriority), or 'Also' (occasionally used to connect parallel derivatives when no parent word has been traced). This arrangement has the great merit that whatever information about the pronunciation, variations in form, and etymology is common to the derivative and its parent word need not be repeated. Further conciseness is sometimes achieved by the appending of derivatives at the end of the definition of the root word in an article that only has one sense-division. From time to time, a derivative that has arisen in only one sense of a complex main word is treated under that sense-division.