Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda: Why We Combine Certain Words
You'll hear "I'd like an ice tea, please" in restaurants across America — but "ice tea" isn't a new beverage that replaced the tried-and-true "iced tea." The linguistic phenomenon of omitting sounds or syllables while speaking is called "elision," and it's pretty common. In fact, we've gained some of the
most popular words in modern English from this practice. From our favorite contractions ("I'm" and "let's") to the most popular English word to express farewell wishes (can you guess what it is?), elisions are a staple of everyday English. "Elision" is a noun that derives from the Latin elisionem, meaning...
