univerbation

plural univerbations

1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe diachronic process of forming a new single word from a fixed expression of several words.

   Standard examples of univerbation are cupboard, brainstorming, or necklace.

   2004, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Björn Wiemer, What makes Grammaticalization?: A Look from its Fringes and its Components, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   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, page 34

   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 […]

   2015, John R. Taylor, The Oxford Handbook of the Word, OUP Oxford, →ISBN, page 173

2. countableuncountablehuman sciencesA new word formed by this process.

   The two suppletive pronominal paradigms *se/o- ~ *te/o- ‘that’ and *i-/ei̯- ~ *e/o- ‘this’ are continued in many IE [Indo-European] languages, both as simplicia and as univerbations with other pronouns and adverbs[.]

   2025 May 28, Sergio Neri, “On the origin and development of the Albanian demonstratives”, in Journal of Historical Linguistics, volume 15, number 2, John Benjamins, →DOI, →ISSN, page 320