Libfix
Affixes |
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See also: |
In linguistics, a libfix is a
History
Splinters were defined by Berman in 1961 as non-morphemic word fragments. This includes not just libfixes, but also word fragments which become words, like burger (< hamburger), flu (< influenza), and net (< network).[4][5][6]
The name libfix was coined by Arnold Zwicky in 2010 as a blend of "liberated" and "affix" specifically for splinters used as productive morphemes.[7]
Criticism
Some of these formations have been considered barbarisms by prescriptive writers on style,[8] though other writers have praised them. Speaking of the -tron suffix, a philologist commented:
I once heard an unkind critic allude disparagingly to these neologisms as dog-Greek. To a lover of the language of Sophocles and Plato these recent coinages may indeed appear to be Greek debased. More appropriately, perhaps, they might be termed lion-Greek or chameleon-Greek. They are Neo-Hellenic in the genuine Renaissance tradition.[9]
Examples
Each example gives the affix, the source word(s) from which it was formed, the meaning, and examples.
This list does not include:
- affixes based on English words like tech or burger used literally, even if they are shortened forms, in this case, for technology and hamburger;
- affixes which are aligned in form and meaning with their etymological source, like -(o)cracy or -orama in cyclorama and diorama from ὅραμα 'spectacle'; motorama is a portmanteau of motor and orama, not a compound of mot- and -orama;
- words which have been separated from phrases, e.g. fu from kung fu.
English
Suffixes
- -ana < Virgiliana (Latin, then French)[10]
- things related to a given person, place, period
- Churchilliana, Americana, Victoriana
- -cation < vacation
- kinds of vacation
- staycation, girlcation
- -copter < helicopter
- having a spinning rotor allowing for flight
- gyrocopter
- -core < hardcore
- aesthetic
- -dar < radar
- the skill of detecting qualities or things
- gaydar, humordar, Jewdar
- -erati < literati
- groups of people with common interests
- -gasm < orgasm
- an intensely pleasurable experience
- foodgasm, cargasm, shoegasm, nerdgasm
- -gate < Watergate
- a scandal
- List of "-gate" scandals
- -(m)(a)geddon < Armageddon
- major disasters (usually facetious)
- snowgeddon, Irmageddon
- -(a)holic, -(a)holism < Alcoholism
- addict(ed)
- -kini < bikini
- type of bathing suit
- burkini, monokini, tankini
- -(i/e/a/∅)licious < delicious
- a high degree of some property (usually jocular)[12]
- bootylicious, babelicious, yummalicious, sacrilicious, crunchalicious
- -(o)nomics < economics
- an economic policy or philosophy
- -ola < pianola, tombola (?)
- used to form commercial products; later, for forms of bribery[13]
- Victrola, moviola, shinola; payola, plugola
- -oma < carcinoma, sarcoma (-ομα is a suffix for deverbal nouns)
- a kind of tumor, swelling, or cancer
- -ome, -omics < genome, genomics, trichome
- a map of a biological system; and other uses in biology
- connectome, proteome; biome, rhizome, vacuome
- -on < electron (see also -tron)
- an elementary particle or quasiparticle
- proton, neutron, meson, phonon, etc.; see List of particles
- -preneur < entrepreneur
- an entrepreneur in some domain
- ecopreneur, mompreneur
- -pocalypse < apocalypse
- a catastrophic event
- snowpocalypse, robopocalypse, beepocalypse
- -tard < retard, a pejorative term for a mentally disabled or stupid person
- people who are foolish or stupid; pejorative
- fucktard, libtard
- -(a)thon, -a-thon < marathon
- things that last a long time or require remarkable endurance
- -verse < universe
- the collection of all things in a category, or a fictional universe
- blogoverse, Twitterverse, Whoniverse
- -wich < sandwich
- sandwich
- fishwich, hamwich, snackwich
- -zilla < Godzilla
- monstrous, scary, or large things; can function as an augmentative and pejorative
Prefixes
- alt- < alternative (usually written with a hyphen)
- outside the mainstream
- alt-rock, alt-right
- cyber- < cybernetics
- issues or policies related to computers
- eco- < ecology
- related to the environment, to ecology, or to sustainability
- econo- < economics
- related to economics; economical, inexpensive
- econometrics (not *economometrics), econophysics; econobox
- franken- < Frankenstein
- related to “human efforts to interfere with nature”[14][15]
- frankenfood, frankenplant, frankenscience
- glut- < gluten, glutamic acid
- related to glutamic acid, one of the amino acids
- glutamate
- heli- < helicopter
- types of helicopters; things related to helicopters[16]
- helibus; helidrome, heliborne
- helibus;
- petro- < petroleum, not rock
- things related to petroleum
- petrodollar, petrochemical, petrocurrency
- syn- < synthetic, synthesizer
- synthetic; related to (musical) synthesizers
- synfuel, syncrude, Synclavier
Italian
Suffix
- -opoli < Tangentopoli'Bribesville'
- a scandal
Bibliography
- Bernard Fradin, "Combining forms, blends, and related phenomena", in Ursula Doleschal, Anna M. Thornton, eds., Extragrammatical and Marginal Morphology, LINCOM studies in theoretical linguistics 12 (2000), ISBN 3895865907, papers from a workshop in Vienna, 1996, p. 11-59 full text
- Otto Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin, 1922, 19:13-15
- Muriel Norde, Sara Sippach, "Nerdalicious scientainment: A network analysis of English libfixes", Word Structure 12:3:353-384 .
- Yuval Pinter, Cassandra L. Jacobs, Max Bittker. "NYTWIT: A Dataset of Novel Words in the New York Times", Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (Barcelona), p. 6509–6515, December 8–13, 2020. full text
- Neal Whitman, "A linguistic tour of the best libfixes, from -ana to -zilla, The Week, September 17, 2013.
- Arnold Zwicky, "Playing with your Morphology", Language Log, August 28, 2006
Notes
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2009, s.v. walkathon
- ^ Merriam-Webster dictionary online s.v. -athon
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1972, s.v. -athon
- ^ Laurie Bauer, "The borderline between derivation and compounding", p. 97-108 in Morphology and its Demarcations, Selected papers from the 11th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, February 2004
- ^ J.M. Berman, "Contribution on Blending", Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 9:278-281 (1961) (not seen)
- ^ "Libfixes", Arnold Zwicky's Blog, January 23, 2010
- ^ ISBN 019214183X, s.v. 'Greek', p. 453-454
- ISBN 019214183X, s.v. 'Greek', p. 453-454
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1884, s.v. ana, suffix
- ^ "-flation". www.affixes.org. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
- ^ Zwicky, 2006
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. -ola suffix 2
- ^ Waldman, Katie (January 6, 2017). "How Franken- Lurched Its Way Into Our Lexicon". Slate.
- ^ "'Frankenstein' and 'Frankenfood': Creator or creation?". Merriam-Webster.
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. heli-, combining form