Contraction (grammar) in the context of "Full stop"

A quasar (/ˈkweɪzɑːr/ KWAY-zar) is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc. Gas in the disc falling towards the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way. Quasars are usually categorized as a subclass of the more general category of AGN. The redshifts of quasars are of cosmological origin.

A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.

The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation. In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as "rock", "god", "type", "writ", "can", "not") and possibly some affixes ("-s", "un-", "-ly", "-ness"). Words with more than one root ("[type][writ]er", "[cow][boy]s", "[tele][graph]ically") are called compound words. Contractions ("can't", "would've") are words formed from multiple words made into one. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases ("a red rock", "put up with"), clauses ("I threw a rock"), and sentences ("I threw a rock, but missed").

Prudence (Latin: prudentia, contracted from providentia meaning "seeing ahead, sagacity") is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. It is classically considered to be a virtue - in particular, one of the four cardinal virtues of Ancient Greek philosophy and one of the seven heavenly virtues of Christianity. Prudentia is an allegorical female personification of the virtue, whose attributes are a mirror and snake, and who is frequently depicted as a pair with Justitia, the Roman goddess of Justice.

The word derives from the 14th-century Old French word prudence, which, in turn, derives from the Latin prudentia meaning "foresight, sagacity". It is often associated with wisdom, insight, and knowledge. The virtue of prudence is the ability to judge between virtuous and vicious actions, not only in a general sense, but with regard to appropriate actions at a given time and place. Although prudence does not itself perform outward actions, and is concerned solely with internal discrimination and choice, all other virtues are regulated by it. For example, to distinguish the virtuous mean of courage from the vicious extremes of recklessness (excess) and cowardice (deficiency) is to be prudent.

The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).

The name Jyutping (itself the Jyutping romanisation of its Chinese name, 粵拼) is a contraction of the official name, and it consists of the first Chinese characters of the terms jyut6 jyu5 (Chinese: 粵語; lit. 'Cantonese language') and ping3 jam1 (Chinese: 拼音; lit. 'phonetic alphabet'; pronounced pīnyīn in Mandarin).

In linguistics, a portmanteau or blend, also known as a blend word or lexical blend, is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words. English examples include smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, and motel, from motor (motorist) and hotel.

In some languages, contamination refers to a subset of blends, where the words combined are synonyms or have similar meanings. This kind of blend can be deliberate or accidental. A blend is similar to a contraction. On one hand, mainstream blends tend to be formed at a particular historical moment followed by a rapid rise in popularity. On the other hand, contractions are formed by the gradual drifting together of words over time due to the words commonly appearing together in sequence, such as do not naturally becoming don't (phonologically, /duː nɒt/ becoming /doʊnt/). A blend also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The British lecturer Valerie Adams's 1973 Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such as motel..., hotel is represented by various shorter substitutes – ‑otel... – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends". Thus, at least one of the parts of a blend, strictly speaking, is not a complete morpheme, but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a blend, of star and fish, as it includes both words in full. However, if it were called a "stish" or a "starsh", it would be a blend. Furthermore, when blends are formed by shortening established compounds or phrases, they can be considered clipped compounds, such as romcom for romantic comedy.

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis 'short') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing period. For example, the term etc. is the usual abbreviation for the Latin phrase et cetera.