Libfix

In linguistics, a libfix is a productive bound morpheme affix created by rebracketing and back-formation, often a generalization of a component of a blended or portmanteau word. For example, walkathon was coined in 1932 as a blend of walk and marathon, and soon thereafter the -athon part was reinterpreted as a libfix meaning "event or activity lasting a long time or involving a great deal of something". 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. Libfixes often utilise epenthesis, as in the example of -holism and -holic which are joined with consonant-final segments via the vowel ⟨a⟩, creating work-a-holism or sex-a-holism.

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).

The name libfix was coined by Arnold Zwicky in 2010 as a blend of "liberated" and "affix" specifically for splinters used as productive morphemes.

Criticism

Some of these formations have been considered barbarisms by prescriptive writers on style, 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.

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)

things related to a given person, place, period

Churchilliana, Americana, Victoriana

-ase < diastase

an enzyme

lactase, polymerase

-cation < vacation

kinds of vacation

staycation, girlcation

-copter < helicopter

having a spinning rotor allowing for flight

gyrocopter

-core < hardcore

aesthetic

speedcore, grindcore, cottagecore, bardcore

-dar < radar

the skill of detecting qualities or things

gaydar, humordar, Jewdar

-erati < literati

groups of people with common interests

digerati, glitterati

-flation < inflation

economic inflation in a particular field

tipflation, stagflation, shrinkflation

-gasm < orgasm

an intensely pleasurable experience

foodgasm, cargasm, shoegasm, nerdgasm

-gate < Watergate

a scandal

gamergate, troopergate; see List of "-gate" scandals

-(m)(a)geddon < Armageddon

major disasters (usually facetious)

snowgeddon, Irmageddon

-(a)holic, -(a)holism < Alcoholism

addict(ed)

shopaholic, workaholic, sexaholic; see English terms suffixed with -holic

-kini < bikini

type of bathing suit

burkini, monokini, tankini

-(i/e/a/∅)licious < delicious

a high degree of some property (usually jocular)

bootylicious, babelicious, yummalicious, sacrilicious, crunchalicious

-(o)nomics < economics

an economic policy or philosophy

Reaganomics, freakonomics

-ola < pianola, tombola (?)

used to form commercial products; later, for forms of bribery

Victrola, moviola, shinola; payola, plugola

-oma < carcinoma, sarcoma (-ομα is a suffix for deverbal nouns)

a kind of tumor, swelling, or cancer

melanoma, adenoma, papilloma

-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

intrapreneur, 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

walkathon, telethon, hackathon

-tron < electron

a kind of vacuum tube; a subatomic particle; a device

magnetron; positron; cyclotron

-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

bridezilla, Mozilla

Prefixes

alt- < alternative (usually written with a hyphen)

outside the mainstream

alt-rock, alt-right

cyber- < cybernetics

issues or policies related to computers

cyberspace, cybercrime

eco- < ecology

related to the environment, to ecology, or to sustainability

eco-terrorism, eco-nationalism, eco-investing

econo- < economics

related to economics; economical, inexpensive

econometrics (not *economometrics), econophysics; econobox

franken- < Frankenstein

related to “human efforts to interfere with nature”

frankenfood, frankenplant, frankenscience

glut- < gluten, glutamic acid

related to glutamic acid, one of the amino acids

glutamine, glutamate

heli- < helicopter

types of helicopters; things related to helicopters

helibus; helipad, heliport, helidrome, heliborne

petro- < petroleum, not rock

things related to petroleum

petrodollar, petrochemical, petrocurrency

syn- < synthetic, synthesizer

synthetic; related to (musical) synthesizers

syngas, synfuel, syncrude, Synclavier

Italian

Suffix

-opoli < Tangentopoli 'Bribesville'

a scandal

Bancopoli, Calciopoli

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