New words: neologisms
Neologisms
Throughout the history of English new words have been incorporated into the language through borrowing (from languages as varied as Latin, Greek, Scandinavian, Arabic, and many others) as well as through the application of morphological and derivational rules to existing words and morphemes. Words currently entering the language are called neologisms (from "neo" new and "log" word).Such words may be blends of existing words and the classic example of this is smog, a blend of smoke and fog, although this blend is so well established that its components may be opaque to most people. A newer blend such as webinar (web and seminar) stands out, but if it survives, then over time its status as a blend will fade and it will been seen as a "regular' word.
A less well-defined form of neologism is the use of an old word with a new meaning. An example is spider referring to a bot that traverses the (worldwide) web. The word bot is a clipping of robot and has led to a variety of terms: chatbot, searchbot, etc.