The story
From back- + formation. Coined by British lexicographer and philologist, primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary James Murray in 1888.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
back-formation
back-for·ma·tionToday it means: 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. Full definition →