univerbation

See also: Univerbation

English

Etymology

Probably from French univerbation, from uni- (“uni-”) + Latin verbum (“word”) + French -ation (“-ation”).

Noun

Examples
always from all way onto from on to albeit from all be it more …

univerbation (countable and uncountable, plural univerbations)

(linguistics) The diachronic process of forming a new single word from a fixed expression of several words.
- 2004, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Björn Wiemer, What makes Grammaticalization?: A Look from its Fringes and its Components, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 34:
  Lexicalization and grammaticization compared In Section 3, it was pointed out that there are two kinds of lexicalization which can be usefully compared with grammaticization, i.e. fossilization and univerbation. The discussion and examples in this section will be confined to the more general and widespread of these two types, i.e. univerbation (the emergence of new lexical entries from collocations), primarily in order to keep the presentation simple and straightforward.
- 2004, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Björn Wiemer, What makes Grammaticalization?: A Look from its Fringes and its Components, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN:
  Standard examples of univerbation are cupboard, brainstorming, or necklace.
- 2015, John R. Taylor, The Oxford Handbook of the Word, OUP Oxford, →ISBN, page 173:
  This process is referred to as univerbation. An example from English is the word notwithstanding, which derives historically from the word not and the participle withstanding. In modern English it counts as a single word, namely, as a preposition, as in the prepositional phrase notwithstanding his request (compare the ungrammatical withstanding his request). Further examples are the conjunction because from Middle-English bi + cause 'by cause of', parallel to French par cause […]
(linguistics) A new word formed by this process.