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Maybe it’s a sign that English speakers and writers are lazy, but we have a historic tendency to shorten long words. It tends to start in informal, spoken settings, but eventually the clipped forms make their way into formal, published writing. That’s when the purists object. But nobody really minds the purists. Eventually, the clipped form becomes preferred and we begin to forget what the original word was.

Burger, plane, bike, phone, gym–does anyone not use these words far more than their multi-syllabic original forms? Has anyone ever said, “I’m going to the gymnasium after work”?

Teens (not teenagers) these days love to clip words in texting and conversation (Those shoes are totes adorbs). My kids like to refer to these shortened forms as abbreves. That’s clearly just faddish wordplay. George Orwell, on the other hand, presaged a more ominous kind of clipping in what he called Newspeak in his dystopian classic, 1984, where the Ministry of Truth becomes minitrue, and what we call thought crime is known as crimethink. Orwell was concerned about language and its manipulation by malevolent authorities seeking to control thought, but I don’t think he’d object to the sort of shorthand version of words that gain popularity these days.

Here are some of the more common words that we have created via clipping.

 

ad – advertisement	memo – memorandum
auto – automobile	mike – microphone
bike – bicycle	mum – chrysanthemum
burger – hamburger	pen – penitentiary
bus – omnibus	phone – telephone
champ – champion	photo – photograph
con – convict	pike – turnpike
co-op – cooperative	plane – airplane
copter – helicopter	ref – referee
cuke – cucumber	rev – revolution
dorm – dormitory	rhino – rhinoceros
exam – examination	specs – spectacles; specifications
flu – influenza	stats – statistics
fridge – refrigerator	stereo – stereophonics
gas – gasoline	sub – submarine
grad – graduate	taxi – taxicab
gym – gymnasium	teen – teenager
hippo – hippopotamus	tie – necktie
lab – laboratory	tux – tuxedo
limo – limousine	typo – typographical error
lunch – luncheon	van – caravan
math – mathematics	vet – veteran; veterinarian