“its” :dubious:
And how about deluxe new and “improved” words like orientate, that really just means orient?
Or preventative, which just means preventive.
Such things are discussed regularly at sites like wordwizard.com.
They would know if the linguists have a technical term for it.
It never fails to amaze me…
With 10,000 parts of English grammar to remember, I will always forget one.
Be glad I wasn’t working for NASA during the Apollo Missions…
“Huston…um…where the toilet paper?”
It puts the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose again.
I’ve been using ‘prolly’ for probably for a while. Esp useful for IMs and texting.
Gaaaaah!!!
I just thought of nuke and nuclear, sorta, or mic and microphone.
Prolly and Probly drive me batty. It’s Probably. I can’t really think of any set of REAL words that does this.* You have the obvious irregardless (fake word) and regardless (real word), though.
*other than the ones already mentioned.
The way “reierate” is normally used, it is indistinguishable from “iterate”. Same for “reduplicate” and “duplicate”.
No, pussycat is just an endearment for cat, like kittycat.
When gurl kittehz must be specified, they’re usually called queens.
Words that retain their meaning if you chop off a part?
“Circumcision”? 
[QUOTE=gigi;11566041And how about deluxe new and “improved” words like orientate, that really just means orient?[/QUOTE]
If by “new” you mean from 1848, then yeah. 
Rhinoceros
Hippopotamus
Disgruntled
Hmm, I’m not a linguist, but we’re talking about several different phenomena here:
A longer word, expression or sentence is shortened over time because people are lazy is called “reduction”: Rhinoceros -> Rhino, for example. This also occurs when adjective phrases are shortened to adjectives:
The wind **is freezing **my bunghole.
The wind that is freezing my bunghole.
The freezing wind froze my bunghole.
An incorrectly identified prefix is just that: a mistake. Flammable and inflammable is one. Here, the prefix in-, which usually means not, here actually is part of the word “inflame.” “Prefecture” does not mean “the fecture that came before,” “rectory” doesn’t mean “to ctory again.”
Two nouns put together is called a “compound noun.” “Pussycat,” “jellyfish,” “firewood,” etc. are examples. That they can be separated and sometimes half of the word would have the same meaning as the whole word may etymologically be either a form of reduction (“pussy” became a word long after “pussycat” was invented,) or just the shortened form became slang which then became accepted in common speech over time to mean the same thing:
Brother -> Bro’ -> Bu
Sister -> Sistah -> Sis
Mother -> Mommy -> Mama -> Mom -> Ma
Clipping can be carried to extremes – dictionaries recognize “za” as a synonym for “pizza,” but your rents may still look at you funny if you say it out loud.
On the other hand, the device formally known as a cellular telephone is almost never called that in everyday speech, and “omnibus” (vehicle) and “perriwig” have been completely replaced by their clipped forms even in formal writing.
ETA: There must be thousands of other examples and it’s probably not very helpful to keep listing them, but as this is a message board **mod **and **admin **are particularly relevant.
But I tought Sylvester was a puddytat.
Sorry for abandoning the thread, but I’ve been away for a while. Seems that so far, clipping or reduction are the closest matches for what I’m looking for, but I distinctly thought I remembered a specific term that described the words themselves, rather than the process through which they are created – something that is to ‘clipping’ as synonym is to ‘making new words up’. But as I said, I may be misremembering.
Anyway, thanks for all the input so far!
Unless you’re British, Australian, or a New-Zealander, in which case it’s
Mother -> Mummy -> Mum
By the way, which came first, Mummy as an ancient Egyptian wrapped bandages, or the UK shortening of mother?
Quite a few in urban American slang:
disrespect (dis)
homeboy (homes, homies)
people (peeps)