slang - What are the principles behind turning foreign language words into verbs?(e.g. ググる and サボる)

I have a decent grasp on the basics, but I'm not quite clear on the details. Anyone know?

Answer

We can find several patterns in these derivations:

1. 
   

   Long words are often clipped:

   
   

   
   

   ハーモニー　　　→　ハーモ
   スターバックス　→　スターバ
   
   サボタージュ　　→　サボ

   
   

   
   


2. 
   

   Long vowels (with ー) and geminate consonants (with ッ) are shortened:

   
   

   
   

   グーグル　　　　→　ググル
   コピー　　　　　→　コピ
   ハーモ　　　　　→　ハモ
   スターバ　　　　→　スタバ
   
   パニック　　　　→　パニク

   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   If final ル is already present, it is reanalyzed as る:

   
   

   
   

   ググル　　　　　→　ググる
   トラブル　　　　→　トラブる
   ダブル　　　　　→　ダブる

   
   

   
   
   


4. 
   

   Otherwise, final る is added:

   
   

   
   

   ハモ　　　　　　→　ハモる
   コピ　　　　　　→　コピる
   サボ　　　　　　→　サボる
   スタバ　　　　　→　スタバる
   パニク　　　　　→　パニクる

   
   

   
   
   

Most of these verbs end up 3 moras long counting the final る. A few end up 4 moras long, or occasionally even longer.

This process is relatively productive colloquially, but most of the words people invent this way don't catch on, and only a few become well-established words. Some have been very successful, though, like your example of ググる.

These patterns aren't absolute, but they describe most of these derivations pretty well. There are exceptions. For example, people have said both ローソる (from ローソン), keeping its long vowel, and the shorter ロソる you might expect from the patterns described above.

Interestingly, these verbs always conjugate as consonant-stem verbs (五段動詞), even with examples like コピる that could conceivably be interpreted as vowel-stem verbs (一段動詞).

Learners are generally not advised to coin words like this themselves.