Where do new words come from? - Marcel Danesi?

New words come from people playing with language, just like you play with toys.

Imagine you're building a tower with blocks, sometimes you add a new block on top, and that's how new words are made. People take old words and mix them up, or they make up completely new ones when they need to describe something special.

1. They might take two words and stick them together. Like “superhero”, super means really good at something, and hero is someone who helps others.
2. Or they might change a word slightly to mean something else. For example, “texting” came from the word “text,” which was used before for writing messages on phones.

Sometimes people make up words just because it sounds fun or cool, like “slapstick”, which is a kind of funny acting in movies and plays.

You can be part of this too! Maybe you'll come up with a new word that everyone starts using one day.