Saturday, February 16, 2013

contractions - Whatever happened to "eyeglasses", "facial tissues", and "video game consoles"?

Now-a-days, we tend to ask:"Have you seen my glasses anywhere?" "Do you have any spare tissues to lend me?" and "How many consoles do you own?"



It's just quicker to say and any native speaker will understand, despite the (possible) ambiguity of these terms; e.g., Where are my glasses? could be interpreted as Where are my drinking vessels? But in real life, this never happens.



Essentially, I have three questions:





  • When did the shortened names; glasses, tissues and consoles first appear and took over from their longer named "parents"?


  • Is there a name for this type of noun which originally began as a compound word (sometimes joined by a hyphen) and was eventually reduced to a single-word?


  • Are there any other compound nouns which have dropped one or more lexemes but still retain their original meanings?




NB: I am not referring to portmanteau words which are neologisms made by blending two words together such as smoke and fog to obtain smog. Neither would I consider them to be contractions because there is no omission of internal letters for example; gov't, govt, gov and dep't or dept. I can only think of "shortened" which fits the bill but can also stand for contractions; unless I am mistaken.



Despite skimming through the relevant Wikipedia pages, I found no explanation or references as to why, (although I think that is easily explained) or when, these names were shortened and became more popular.




Source Wikipedia: eyeglasses; facial tissues; video game consoles.



EDIT: In my original title I had included "tissue paper" but as several users have commented, tissue paper is used for wrapping delicate objects whereas tissues normally sold in boxes are commonly referred to as facial tissues, especially in the US.

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