Libfix
In linguistics, a libfix is a productive bound morpheme affix created by back-formation, often a generalization of a components of a blended or portmanteau word. For example, walkathon was coined in 1932 as a blend of walk and marathon,[1] and soon thereafter the -athon part was reinterpreted as a libfix morpheme meaning "event or activity lasting a long time or involving a great deal of something".[2][3] Words formed with this suffix include talkathon, telethon, hackathon, and so on. Affixes whose morpheme boundaries are etymologically based and which are used in their original sense, are not libfixes.
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]
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.
Suffixes
- -ana < Virgiliana (Latin, then French)[8]
- things related to a given person, place, period
- Churchilliana, Americana, Victoriana
- -ase < diastase
- an enzyme
- -cast < broadcast
- a kind of broadcast
- -cation < vacation
- kinds of vacation
- staycation, girlcation
- -copter < helicopter
- having a spinning rotor allowing for flight
- -dar < radar
- the skill of detecting qualities or things
- gaydar, humordar, Jewdar
- -erati < literati
- groups of people with common interests
- -gate < Watergate
- a scandal
- -(m)(a)geddon < Armageddon
- major disasters (usually facetious)
- snowgeddon, carmageddon
- -kini < bikini
- type of bathing suit
- monokini, tankini
- -(i/e/a/∅)licious < delicious
- a high degree of some property (usually jocular)[9]
- bootylicious, babelicious, yummalicious, sacrilicious, crunchalicious
- -(o)nomics < economics
- an economic policy or philosophy
- -ola < pianola (?)
- used to form commercial products; later, for forms of bribery[10]
- 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
- an elementary particle or quasiparticle
- proton, neutron, meson, phonon, etc.; see List of particles
- -(o)rama, -o-rama < panorama, diorama, cyclorama
- a spectacle or event, also an augmentative
- -preneur < entrepreneur
- an entrepreneur in some domain
- -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
- blogoverse, Twitterverse
- -wich < sandwich
- sandwich
- fishwich, hamwich, snackwich
- -zilla < Godzilla
- monstrous, scary, or large things; can function as an augmentative and pejorative
More examples: (alco)holic, (ice)berg, (or)gasm, (Term)inator, (apo)calypse, (por)osity, (ex)plain, (ex)ploitation, (barbe)que, (Wood)stock, (spec)tacular, (mar)tini, (fan)tastic, (hard)ware.
Prefixes
- cyber- < cybernetics
- issues or policies related to computers
- glut- < gluten, glutamic acid
- related to the amino acid, glutamic acid
- glutamine, glutamate
- heli- < helicopter
- types of helicopters; things related to helicopters[11]
- petro- < petroleum, not rock
- things related to petroleum
- syn- < synthetic, synthesizer
- synthetic; related to (musical) synthesizers
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 doi:10.3366/word.2019.0153.
- 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)
- Ingrid Fandrych, "Submorphemic elements in the formation of acronyms, blends and clippings", Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology 2 (2008) doi:10.4000/lexis.713
- "Libfixes", Arnold Zwicky's Blog, January 23, 2010
- Oxford English Dictionary, 1884, s.v. ana, suffix
- Zwicky, 2006
- Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. -ola suffix 2
- Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. heli-, combining form