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A colleague of mine recently asked me a question for which I have not been able to find an answer, so, I thought I would consult the definitive experts on words.
I know there is a term for just about everything, but, this one has eluded me.
Perhaps I'm using the incorrect search parameters, but, it has to do with a particular vernacular whereupon the speaker will insert a word inside an otherwise complete word. An example might be, "Well, that's a-whole-nother issue", the word "whole" being inserted inside the word "another".
Is there a name for this construct? If not, perhaps there should be, since , at least in American English, it appears to be quite common.
Thanks,
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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It's usually called tmesis ( link), although the term originally meant something different in Classical Greek.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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infixation
Yes, but I do not. I use -fixation in a morphological context. To my mind, something different is going on with the abso-bloody-lutely type phenomena. What gets infixed is a morph (cf. nasal presents in Greek and Sanskrit), not an independent word. What's going in in (modern) tmesis seems more like a rhetorical device than a morphological process. But, hey, that's just me!
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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then there's dystmesis (ON = 2)
[fr. Gk. tmesis, act of cutting + dys-, bad]
defined variously as: a) a synonym for tmesis;
b) tmesis at syllable boundaries, as opposed to
between parts of a compound; c) separation at
an inappropriate or unlikely position
considering the lexemes, it seems like the actual
meaning should be closer to the last of these;
e.g., unbefreakinglievable (as opposed to the
tmesis of unfreakingbelievable).
---
edit: years back, when I offered up tmesis as the
answer to this same question, it was met with some
measure of increscoffingdulity; but I note that
tmesis now has an ON of 25!
Last edited by tsuwm; 12/11/09 07:51 PM.
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