univerbalism

plural univerbalisms

1. A protologism that provides a shorter way of saying something.

   Even the reduction of periodical names to this bare univerbalism, however, does not mean that the fundamental principles of poetics have been abandoned.

   1967, Roman Jakobson, To honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday

   2 more examples

   Colloquial speech typically exhibits a tendency towards brevity, many short or shortened expressions are used as a result of univerbalism (final exams > finals, high school > high, oral exams > orals, etc.), clipping (comfortable > comfy, spectacles > specs, pyjamas > jams, etc.) and acronyms (e.g. I’ve got a new CD. Send me an SMS. She’s a WASP. Let me know ASAP.).

   2015, Gabriela Missikova, Linguistic Stylistics

   Since 2007 the Center of the Creative Development of the Russian Language has chosen every year the Word of the Year. Since 2009 so-called netologisms have also been chosen -- new words about the internet (2009 guglik 'unit of measurement for the publicity of the internet', 2010 lybik (←ulybat'sja 'to smile' for the Russian anglicism smajlik 'smiley'), and since 2010 the most original newly created univerbalism has been chosen (by the people in 2010 sderbank 'a bank that gains, pulls out/Russ. drat's kogo 'to pull out, to cheat'/ much money'; by the experts tandemagogija 'demagogy of the tandem', i.e. Medvedev and Putin).

   2015, Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, →ISBN