Abstract

New words in Russian of the present period appear at a quick pace, in large quantities and reflect changes in political, economic, cultural and social life in Russia. They can be classified according to different criteria, such as coining of lexical unit (word or word combination), purpose and function, field of use and origin. Most of these new words are widely used and stylistically neutral. However, many new words are stylistically coloured or used in a narrow field. There are three main ways in which new words appear: word-formative derivation, semantic derivation and word borrowing.