Infixing and Tmesis

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Scott. I’m calling from Wellfleet out on Tate Cod.

Cool.

Hi, Scott. Welcome to the show.

Well, the other day I was talking with a friend, maybe it was about politics or something,

And he said something like, oh, that’s a whole nother issue.

I said, oh, yeah, yeah. And later on I was thinking about it, a whole nother issue.

And I’m thinking, nother? Is that a word? Nother?

And then I was reminded of Fair Lady when Eliza Doolittle is singing, and she sings,

Oh, so lovely sitting, absa-bloom and lootly still.

I’m thinking, lootly. Is that a word?

Absa-bloom and lootly.

So if you say a whole nother or absa-bloom and lootly are the nother and lootly words.

Is that your question?

Oh, yeah. What’s going on here?

Well, they’re still a part of the word that they’re now distanced from.

So nether is still a part of another.

It’s still actually a word and absolutely is still an entire word,

Even though there’s something inserted in the middle.

You’ve probably heard of temesis or infixing.

Do you know these terms?

I think I’ve heard of them.

Temesis and infixing are very similar.

Linguists have been quibbling and bickering about the difference between the two for a very long time.

But by my estimation, temesis is about inserting something in the middle of a word or a compound that still makes sense, but doesn’t make a new word.

So a whole nother is a great example of that.

Avoiding crowds is a whole nother problem.

Another is still there.

The entire word is still present.

It’s just got hole in the middle of it.

Infixing is very similar, and it could be considered a kind of temesis.

But with infixes, infixes, by the way, are something inserted in the middle.

So prefixes at the beginning of a word, suffixes at the end, infix in the middle.

With infixes, you’re adding a word or a word part into the middle of another word or compound,

Probably making a new word or meaning.

So for me, that’s the difference between the two.

Infixing usually tends to be naughty in English.

And temesis often is naughty.

So absobloom and lootly is a minced version of something a little more coarse that we can’t say on the radio, right?

Something besides blooming, right?

Yeah, absobloom and lootly.

Yeah, that’s right.

And there’s a ton of these.

There was a paper published in 1980 in the Journal of American Speech by James McMillan.

And it’s got the very boring title of infixing and interposing in English.

But it’s a glossary of a lot of very naughty words that involve infixing or temesis.

And a lot of bickering in the text about whose definition of these

Tameses is correct. In any case, there’s stuff we can say on there like

Guaranteed instead of guaranteed or guaranteed instead of the other thing.

Abso-positively is a very common one, by the way, that isn’t naughty.

A lot of people use that. So there are some exceptions, but generally they’re naughty.

Well, how about this one where you take a verb, let’s say, to take off,

And then you split it. So you could say, I’m going to take off my hat,

Or you could say, I’m going to take my hat off.

Is that a similar situation?

What we need here is sentence diagramming.

The rare case in life where the heroes that know sentence diagramming can come to the rescue.

The verb is still there.

To take off is still there.

That phrasal verb still exists.

It doesn’t matter at all that those other words are inserted between the two and the rest of the verb.

It’s still there.

It’s still present.

Well, thank you for clearing all of those things up.

You are most welcome.

It’s our pleasure.

I love your show, you guys.

Keep up the great work.

Okay.

Thanks for calling.

Appreciate it.

Bye, Scott.

Bye.

Take care.

Clearing up all those things or clearing all those things up.

I did want to talk about the word temesis.

We should spell it.

Oh, yes, please.

Because it’s an oddly spelled word.

It’s T-M-E-S-I-S.

And it goes back to a Greek word that means cutting.

Temesis goes back to temno, which means to cut, which is also related to words like atom,

Which is something that the Greeks thought was uncuttable, which of course it is,

And anatomy, which is all cut up.

You can’t cut an atom, but you sure can split one.

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