Punctuation and Grammar and Usage, Oh My! Part 3: Infixes

We all know what prefixes and suffixes are. They’re little word-pieces that you stick on to the front and back of larger word-pieces like legos to make other words, like dis-honest and un-car-ing. There are obvious prefixes and suffixes like those, where there’s a complete word in there that the prefix/suffix (I’m going to call them –fixes now) is just stuck to momentarily, and then there are –fixes that have melted into the word like gooey cheese and we don’t even notice that they’re not part of the root, like worth-y and in-de-fatig-able. (For more on stuff like this, check out a book on morphology.)

But did you know there is a word for this kind of language modification that comes in the middle of words, rather than at the front and back? Because there is and it is awesome. 

They’re called infixes. (Here are some fireworks to show you how excited these make me. There were fireworks in my brain when I found out about them. Okay, there were fireworks in my brain every single day of my Intro to English Language class. Even flipping through my notes makes me a little giddy. Fine, a lot giddy. Have some fireworks and stop making fun of me.)

But there aren’t very many infixes in the English language. They’re like the Forgotten Balder* of the –fixes. 

Italian has regular infixes. If you’re a musical person, you know that to go from loud to louder, you go from forte to fortissimo, and to go even louder than that, you go to fortississimo, and to go even louder you go fortissississimo, at which point you wonder if the composer was on crack. 

The only “regular” use of infixes in English is used with swear words. A bad day is unbefreakinlievable. Disconflippintinuous. Incanfreakindescent. Wheeeeee! 

And then there’s a random infix that is used only in speech: “another” may be divided into “a whole nother.” Sweet, right?? A whole nother. That’s a whole nother issue. We don’t do this with any other words (that I know of). How did you get to be so special, a whole nother? I love you. 

So give infixes your love and appreciation, or at least a hearty tip of the hat. Don’t treat them like Forgotten Balder. 

*Forgotten Balder is a meme based on the movie Thor. Basically, in Thor, Odin’s sons are Thor and Loki; but in the myths, Odin has a crapload of sons and Loki is not even one of them. So there’s this joke that Balder (or Baldur, or Baldr) is actually there in the movie mythos, but he’s just completely ignored. For extra hilarity, Balder in the Forgotten Balder meme is Liam Hemsworth, Chris Hemsworth’s (Thor’s) younger brother. I probably should not find Forgotten Balder as funny as I do.