- The term ‘gel’ is another form of the word ‘jealous’ and was derived from its original form through clipping and phonology based morphology. The word ‘jealous’ was clipped to its first syllable, ‘jeal,’ disposing of the ending –ous. The –ous ending is a nonlexical component that generally glosses the word as an adjective. The letter j has a pronunciation similar to the soft pronunciation of g, and the ‘ea’ in ‘jeal’ is pronounced as a short e. Since the remaining syllable, ‘jeal,’ is pronounced like the word ‘gel’ in speech, the phonology of the word influenced the resulting spelling change. This results in a word that is a homonym of the noun form of ‘gel,’ referring to an object with a jelly-like state between a liquid and a solid. However, these two forms of ‘gel’ are completely separate words in terms of morphology and etymology. The user created this new word to informally shorten the original word and to reduce the number of letters that she needed to type.
Gel
adjective; clipping also phonologically based allomorphy
feeling uneasiness or resentment towards another person due to envy
Etymology : from the word ‘jealous,’ which shows fundamental influences from Old French; previous forms include ‘jelus’ from the 14th century and ‘gelus’ from the 12th century (from Online Etymology Dictionary)
Source : “How did you manage to get Taylor Swift tickets already? I am so gel!” -friend’s Facebook comment (September, 2011)
Last modified: 3 December 2011