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OK. Before you kick me out, hear my question. The earliest example of this sort of infixation (tmesis? Infix? Expletive infix?) I have uncovered is the lyric from My Fair Lady. It opened in February 1956 with the lyric of “Wouldn't It Be Loverly†containing the word
abso-bloomin'-lutely
Anyone have an earlier example?
What method have you used to research this? And are you looking only at songs lyrics, or is it wide open? I'd have to believe that it's been done well before 1956, many times over. In fact, I'm sure that our prehistoric ancestors used to say things like, "This mammoth is abso-freakin'-lutely delicious!"
So far I've been using the Internet for leads and then done some fact checking to confirm. Any attested use would be welcome. I suspect if it made it into a musical, it was well established at that time, but finding a written record might be hard. Audio recordings might provide the earliest record. Sorry for the redundancy.
I love these infixes. Although my opportunities to use them are limited, I find that I sometimes elicit them from others. Does mother-flippin-flopper count as one?
I was hoping someone else was hunting for the paleo-infix ur-exemplar. That tera-gd-dactyl just took off with our apato-freakin-saurus steaks.
How about T-bone-eatin-Rex?
The thought occurred to me about what most infixes have in common: the desire to express superlatives in a creative way. Many infixes employ curse words, because curse words are by definition superlatives. It's a small, logical step from creating and using curse words to using them for infixes. In other words, I'm guessing that infixes have been around at least since the invention of curse words. And that goes back a long, long way. Everyone knows that the Third Commandment states "Thou shalt not use the name of the Lord thy God in infixes."
Glenn, before you posted this I didn't know these were called infixes. If it's got a name, then I'm sure that someone has done some research on it. Maybe there's a PhD dissertation paper filed in some dusty university warehouse? If there isn't, there's an abso-bloomin'-lutely great idea for any ambitious PhD candidate in linguistics.
I have found several academic treatments of these infixes. They are excellent. They focus on the structural aspects and well-formedness. I find that, unlike lexical scholars, structural linguists tend not to be so interested in finding out about early use and history. Perhaps I need to found a new linguistc specialty -- it could be eponymously called onlyglenncaresics -- to find and describe earliest known uses of structural innovations in language. Then people could say “doing onlyglenn-gd-caresics research freakin sucks.â€
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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