In linguistics, a libfix (from "liberated affix") 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,Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2009, s.v. walkathon 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".Oxford English Dictionary, 1972, s.v. -athon 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).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 2004J.M. Berman, "Contribution on Blending", Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 9:278-281 (1961) (not seen)
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 '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 -(i)ana related to a given person, place, period Churchilliana, Americana, Victoriana -ase an enzyme lactase, polymerase -cation kinds of vacation staycation, girlcation -copter having a spinning rotor allowing for flight gyrocopter -core aesthetic, hardcore punk derivatives, hardcore techno derivatives speedcore, grindcore, cottagecore, bardcore -dar the skill of detecting qualities or things gaydar, humordar, Jewdar -erati groups of people with common interests digerati, glitterati -flation economic inflation in a particular field tipflation, stagflation, shrinkflation -gasm an intensely pleasurable experience foodgasm, cargasm, shoegasm, nerdgasm -gate a scandal gamergate, troopergate; see List of "-gate" scandals -(m)(a)geddon major disasters (usually facetious) carmageddon, snowgeddon, Irmageddon -(a)holic, -(a)holism addict(ed) shopaholic, workaholic, sexaholic; see English terms suffixed with -holic -kini type of bathing suit burkini, monokini, tankini, mankini -(i/e/a/∅)licious a high degree of some property (usually jocular)Zwicky, 2006 bootylicious, babelicious, yummalicious, sacrilicious, crunchalicious -(o)nomics an economic policy or philosophy Reaganomics, freakonomics -ola used to form commercial products; later, for forms of briberyOxford English Dictionary, s.v. -ola suffix 2 Victrola, moviola, shinola; payola, plugola -oma a kind of tumor, swelling, or cancer melanoma, adenoma, papilloma -ome, -omics a map of a biological system; and other uses in biology connectome, proteome; biome, rhizome, vacuome -on an elementary particle or quasiparticle proton, neutron, meson, phonon, etc.; see List of particles -preneur an entrepreneur in some domain intrapreneur, ecopreneur, mompreneur -pocalypse a catastrophic event snowpocalypse, robopocalypse, beepocalypse -tard people who are foolish or stupid; pejorative fucktard, libtard -(a)thon, -a-thon that last a long time or require remarkable endurance walkathon, telethon, hackathon -tron a kind of vacuum tube; a subatomic particle; a device magnetron; positron; cyclotron -(n)(i)verse the collection of all things in a category, or a fictional universe blogoverse, Twitterverse, Whoniverse -wich sandwich fishwich, hamwich, snackwich -zilla monstrous, scary, or large things; can function as an augmentative and pejorative bridezilla, Mozilla
Prefixes alt- outside the mainstream alt-rock, alt-right crypto- related to cryptocurrency cryptoasset, cryptobro, cryptocoin, cryptojack, cryptoverse cyber- issues or policies related to computers cyberspace, cybercrime eco- related to the environment, to ecology, or to sustainability eco-terrorism, eco-nationalism, eco-investing econo- related to economics; economical, inexpensive econometrics (not *economometrics), econophysics; econobox franken- related to “human efforts to interfere with nature” frankenfood, frankenplant, frankenscience glut- related to glutamic acid, one of the amino acids glutamine, glutamate heli- types of helicopters; related to helicoptersOxford English Dictionary, s.v. heli-, combining form helibus; helipad, heliport, helidrome, heliborne hyper- related to hypertext hyperlink, hypermedia oxy-, oxi- related to oxygen oxytocin, oximeter, oxycodone petro- related to petroleum petrodollar, petrochemical, petrocurrency syn- synthetic; related to (musical) synthesizers syngas, synfuel, syncrude, Synclavier
Italian
Suffix -opoli a scandal Bancopoli, Calciopoli
Portuguese (Brazil)
Suffix -ão a scandal Petrolão, ,
Bibliography
Bernard Fradin, "Combining forms, blends, and related phenomena", in papers from a workshop in Vienna, 1996, p. 11-59 full text Otto Jespersen,
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
Arnold Zwicky,
Notes