Which word formation process is used to create brunch, smog, urinalysis, and broasted?

• A. Affixation
• B. Back-formation
• C. Blending
• D. Conversion

Answer: (C)

Blending is when two independent words are combined to form a new one that carries a sense from both source words. In brunch, breakfast and lunch fuse into a single meal name, signaling something between the two meals. Smog joins smoke and fog to name a cloudy atmospheric condition. Urinalysis pairs urine and analysis to describe a test that analyzes urine. Broasted comes from broil and roast, describing a cooking method packaged into one term. This approach is different from affixation, which would add prefixes or suffixes to a base word; back-formation, which creates a new word by removing what looks like an affix; or conversion, which shifts a word’s grammatical role without changing its form. Blending best explains these four creations.