In some of the examples we have just considered, there is a joining of two separate words to produce a single form. Thus, Lehn and Wort are combined to produce Lehnwort in German. This combining process, technically known as compounding, is very common in languages such as German and English, but much less common in languages such as French and Spanish. Common English compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and waterbed. All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives (good-looking, low-paid) and compounds of adjective (fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a full-time job.

This very productive source of new terms has been well documented in English and German, but can also be found in totally unrelated languages, such as Hmong (spoken in South East Asia), which combines hwj(“pot”) and kais (“spout”) to produce hwjkais (“kettle”). Recent creations are paj (“flower”) plus kws (“corn”) for pajkws (“popcorn”) and hnab (“bag”) + rau (“put”) + ntawv (“paper” or “book”) for hnabrauntawv (“schoolbag”).