From Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words #674 (1/27/10):
AVATARD A chorus of disagreement came from readers over this. All were sure it’s from “Avatar” + “retard”, as are “celebutard” and a few other slang terms, using “retard” in its current abusive sense of a mentally retarded person. Another term of similar origin, I am told, is “freetard”, which was supplied by several correspondents. Jeremy Ardley described it thus: “it’s an epithet used by those who pay for their software for those who choose to use free open-source software. The implication is that if you get it for free it ain’t worth diddly-squat and you’re mentally challenged if you choose to use it.” Others mentioned politically motivated insults of similar formation, such as “conservatard” (by coincidence, my newspaper last Sunday included the related term “Libtard”, though the initial
capital letter showed that it referred specifically to the British
Liberal Democrat party).
And then:
AFFIXES Various comments on word endings last week and this have persuaded me to add three entries to my site about the building blocks of English: the three are “-tard“, “-flation” and “-naut“.
Ah, here’s a topic that combines three of my interests: playful word formation, portmanteau words, and the “liberation” of parts of words (like the three Quinion just listed), to yield word-forming elements that are semantically like the elements of compounds but are affix-like in that they are typically bound.
“Playful word formation” — sometimes called “expressive word formation”, but neither label is entirely satisfactory — picks out patterns of word formation that have a playful or show-offy character to them; instances of these patterns often strike people as innovations and as decidedly informal. Some playful examples use plain ordinary affixes (-ness and –ity, for instance, as here), but others are portmanteaus (some playful portmanteaus here), and others have the liberated elements that Quinion calls “combining forms” (but also classifies as prefixes or suffixes on the basis of their position within words), for instance –licious and its variants (which was last discussed on Language Log here, with links to earlier postings).
Another word on the liberated elements. Quinion’s “combining forms” include both liberated elements and elements from complex learnèd forms, as in thermometer. It would be nice to have a term for the liberated elements that is both more memorable than “combining forms” and also signals the origin of these elements in the reanalysis of existing words (whether the source words are ordinary words, as with –tacular, or portmanteaus, as with –dar). I suggest libfix, which can be labeled a prelibfix (prefixal) or a postlibfix (suffixal) when its position within the word is especially relevant.
I have considerable files on playful word formation, portmanteaus, and libfixes, but have posted inventories only for the second (here and here). The other two are on my to-do list, but right now I have all these teaching things to attend to.
January 24, 2010 at 7:54 am |
[…] Arnold Zwicky's Blog A blog mostly about language « Libfixes […]
February 3, 2010 at 5:06 am |
Jeff Shaumeyer writes with another -tard sighting:
February 8, 2010 at 7:17 am |
[…] 1/23/10: Libfixes (link) -tard, -flation, -naut and […]
February 15, 2010 at 11:10 am |
[…] posting gives a wonderful quote from Balzac’s Le père Goriot (1834-35) about play with the libfix -orama. Etherton’s summary: the characters come up with santérama, froitorama, soupeaurama […]
May 4, 2010 at 9:35 am |
[…] nevertheless) involving the second part of apocalypse and words with a suffix-like element (a libfix) -pocalypse, like the -gate of coinings for the names of scandals, which is no longer (necessarily) […]
July 11, 2010 at 10:25 am |
[…] By arnoldzwicky A weekend cartoon from Hilary Price, with a pun on thong and the thon part of the libfix […]
January 17, 2011 at 5:10 pm |
[…] ana, abstracting the -ana from the various titles, not only liberating the suffix, but elevating it to a lexical item on its own, like ology and ism, as in Michael Quinion’s […]
February 24, 2011 at 9:28 am |
[…] hate mail he gets along these lines. My main interest here is in the suffix — I’d say libfix — -tard, but first a few words about gadget hate […]
April 15, 2011 at 9:41 am |
[…] with female friends’, following on the widely reported mancation, both of these suggesting a new libfix that started with straightforward portmanteaus (staycation and daycation) involving […]
May 1, 2011 at 10:35 am |
[…] “Phallicity: the penisaurus” (here), for example. The element -saurus has then become a libfix, available for combining with any number of first […]
June 11, 2011 at 10:09 am |
[…] POST –tard AZBlog, 1/23/10: Libfixes (link): refers to World Wide Words #674, 1/23/10, on -tard, -naut, […]
June 24, 2011 at 6:31 am |
[…] for you to forget). In “Whatpocalypse Now?” Mark Liberman at Language Log talks about libfixes, in this case sportspocalypse. Arnold Zwicky, coiner of the libfix term, has an extensive […]
July 13, 2011 at 7:53 am |
[…] brings us to the playful reptard, with the libfix -tard (postings on it here and […]
January 19, 2012 at 5:47 am |
[…] sometimes takes the -bag suffix — or perhaps it’s what Arnold Zwicky calls a libfix — to become ledgebag, a popular Irish English slang term that means the same as legend. Indeed, […]
May 6, 2012 at 8:46 pm |
[…] inventory of my language play using -manteau (from portmanteau) as a libfix. Most of them have a first element that’s the first element in the portmanteaus (as in my […]
April 9, 2014 at 9:38 am |
[…] QP1 is about libfixation, a term coined by Arnold Zwicky for the process by which a word-chunk that frequently appears in […]
December 16, 2014 at 6:22 am |
[…] instead of political liberation, consider linguistic liberation… in the form of “libfixes,” Arnold Zwicky’s term for “liberated” word parts that yield new […]
January 27, 2015 at 8:43 am |
[…] instead of political liberation, consider linguistic liberation… in the form of “libfixes,” Arnold Zwicky’s term for “liberated” word parts that yield new […]
February 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm |
[…] a useful word for flagging something happening in society. Mansplain has already spawned a popular libfix (a blend of liberated and affix): – “splain”. We already see its use expanding to include […]
August 26, 2015 at 12:04 pm |
[…] of these combining forms are what Zwicky calls libfixes, a term he coined in 2010, because they are liberated parts of words or portmanteaus but ‘are affix-like in that they are […]
September 3, 2015 at 1:39 am |
[…] in this case, is known as a “libfix,” a term coined by Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky in 2010. A libfix is a string of letters liberated from its original word and affixed (as prefix or […]
September 7, 2015 at 1:09 pm |
[…] pocalypses are libfixes (say that fast three times). A libfix is a letter string that uses a strong connotation to add […]
September 27, 2015 at 3:37 am |
[…] word’s ending, topia, has also become a libfix—that is, a string of letters pulled from its original word and used as an evocative prefix or […]
November 23, 2015 at 4:24 am |
[…] tail may be more powerful still, turning anyone into a monster. Zilla is a libfix, a string of letters pulled from its original to evoke an idea, like the gate of Watergate or the […]
February 28, 2016 at 12:02 am |
[…] formation, girlcott, to 1884. It features -cott as an early example of a “libfix”, a term coined by linguist Arnold Zwicky for this fun and fascinating phenomenon we see in inventions like Snowzilla or Carmageddon, both of […]
July 4, 2016 at 10:11 am |
[…] culture, that we are breaking apart words in whole new ways. Like the libfix, a term coined by Arnold Zwicky. As Neal Whitman explained the phenomenon for […]
July 21, 2016 at 7:18 am |
[…] us capture. But the broader utility and productivity of pokéswears – and of the potential poké- libfix itself – remains to be seen. For now, one thing’s for sure: We have a lot of pokéuckin’ […]
December 6, 2017 at 10:06 pm |
[…] 12/6/2017: I am given to understand that some of these might fall under the category of what Arnold Zwicky calls libfixes, liberated suffixes and prefixes (and presumably infixes). Let’s see how the terms I’ve […]
December 6, 2017 at 10:11 pm |
I’ve blogged about an overlapping phenomenon which I’ve chosen to call ninja words, but would love to have a more formal term to describe what created cheeseburger, mentee, La Niña, Silver Alert, and Nannygate. https://chasbelov.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/ninja-words-and-phrases/
January 16, 2020 at 3:55 am |
[…] – it’s still making headlines – and soon gave rise to other -fishing terms. . . . Libfix is Arnold Zwicky’s term for a certain type of combining form – a bit like an affix, but narrower in meaning and […]
October 16, 2020 at 9:07 am |
[…] shall be pleasing.” Nocebo breaks off the -cebo part as a “liberated infix,” or libfix, and adds no- as a negative particle. To describe an effect somewhere between the two, but trending […]
October 23, 2020 at 6:37 am |
[…] About 20 years ago, the linguist Arnold Zwicky—a prolific coiner of language words, including libfix, recency illusion, and zombie rule—proposed the term risonym. This is a great word. We see the […]
October 3, 2021 at 4:21 pm |
[…] other people will necessarily find “correct”. Arnold Zwicky’s blog post “Libfixes” proposes this name for the phenomenon and gives some examples (such as -licious and […]