if a chocoholic eats chocohol, is it chocolategate?

March 30, 2011 4:04 PM

Is there a word for this language phenomenon?

An alcoholic is addicted to alcohol. A shopaholic is addicted to shopping and a workaholic is addicted to working. But the suffix -aholic, taken from "alcoholic" didn't originally mean "person addicted to," because an alcoholic is not addicted to alc. Part of the word "alcoholic" was taken and given a new life as a suffix.

Similarly, in American culture, the suffix "gate" has come to mean "a scandal," because of Watergate. But Watergate was not a scandal that occurred at a place named Water--it occurred at a place named Watergate. Again, part of the word "watergate" was taken and given a new suffix life.

These are just two large examples of a phenomenon I've noticed happening all the time. There are others, but these are the two main ones.

Is there a name for this? They're not quite portmanteau words, because it's not just one or a few words being coined--it's that portions of the original words have been turned into suffixes that relate to the original word's meaning, but that part of the word didn't denote that meaning in the original word.

This sounds more complicated than I intended for it to sound.

posted by millipede to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

I would consider them colloquialisms.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:09 PM on March 30, 2011

Sort of like a snowclone.
posted by unknowncommand at 4:12 PM on March 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

Morphological misanalysis. And what it's creating are productive derivational morphemes.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 4:14 PM on March 30, 2011

Back-formation is the term for this kind of thing.
posted by aubilenon at 4:15 PM on March 30, 2011 [6 favorites]

I'm not sure there's an established term for this specific phenomenon, besides calling these words humorous or nonce formations and keeping in mind that some of them may enter regular use. If we're citing Language Log as an authority on terminology, I think this post from there is more relevant. Geoffrey Pullum suggests the rather generic "combining form."
posted by Nomyte at 4:23 PM on March 30, 2011

Best answer: I thought it was a backformation plus derivation, but upon googling, it looks like the more accepted idea is that both examples you gave are blends.

Here's an entire journal article on the topic, with citations. (pdf)

Here's another mention in a blog on the topic, if you don't like pdfs.

On preview - the first paper I linked began by calling them combining forms. I presume the rest of the paper is a discussion as to why she feels they fit as blends, but I don't have time to read it.
posted by wending my way at 4:25 PM on March 30, 2011

Have you seen this very relevant Mitchell and Webb Watergate sketch?
posted by Admiral Haddock at 4:25 PM on March 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

And here's a link to a Google book from 1993 that was calling them blends.
posted by wending my way at 4:27 PM on March 30, 2011

Also relevant: folk etymology
posted by bq at 4:45 PM on March 30, 2011

I believe it's rebracketing.

In the case of alcoholic, it's actually been rebracketed twice.

Alcohol is from the Arabic, 'al kahul', where 'al' is the definite article. So you have two lexemes [al] and [kahul] that are merged into one 'alcohol'.

In the case of alcoholic, what happens is you have two lexemes [alcohol] and [-ic] (pertaining to), rebracketed to [alc] and [-oholic]...
posted by empath at 5:01 PM on March 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

There are a lot of terms that could describe this...it really depends on which level of linguistic analysis you want to focus on. For example, if you're talking about the mis-suffixation, then that's in the camp of morphology - specifically morphological derivation - and you could further describe it in a bunch of ways (including morphological misanalysis, as said upthread). If you want to tie that to the history, then the suggestions above (rebracketing and folk etymology) apply. Getting more into the conceptual/metaphoric domain, we're talking about metonymy and conceptual blends. Blends are also a term used when describing abbreviation processes and neologisms, so that can take you right back to morphology, whee! Also, lexical semanticists will want to have a say, and they can offer some interesting ways to look at the process with terms like backformation and metonymy (again). I'm just pointing this out because you're likely to get a variety of seemingly conflicting answers, but it's just a matter of the scope and focus that the term suggested defines.

Also, never underestimate the proclivity of linguists to invent new terms as needed. ;)
posted by iamkimiam at 5:33 PM on March 30, 2011 [1 favorite]