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An infix is an affix inserted inside an existing word. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Infixes in English

English has very few infixes, and those it does have are marginal. A few are heard in colloquial speech, and a couple more are found in technical terminology.

• The infix <iz> or <izn> is characteristic of hip-hop slang, for example hizouse for house and shiznit for shit. Infixes also occur in some language games. The <ma> infix, whose distribution was documented by linguist Alan C. L. Yu, gives a word an ironic pseudo-sophistication, as in sophistimacated, saxomaphone, and edumacation.
• Chemical nomenclature includes the infixes <pe>, signifying complete hydrogenation (from piperidine), and <et> (from ethyl), signifying the ethyl radical C₂H₅. Thus from the existing word picoline is derived pipecoline, and from lutidine is derived lupetidine; from phenidine and xanthoxylin are derived phenetidine and xanthoxyletin.
• The word fuck is also used as an infix in English, an example being fanfuckingtastic. This makes fuck the only word in the english language which can be used as a prefix, infix and suffix.

Hip hop is a subculture, which is said to have begun with the work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaattaa. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A language-game is a philosophical concept developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring to simple examples of language use and the actions into which the language is woven. ... “Ironic” redirects here. ... IUPAC nomenclature is a system of naming chemical compounds and of describing the science of chemistry in general. ... General Name, Symbol, Number hydrogen, H, 1 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 1, 1, s Appearance colorless Atomic mass 1. ... Piperidine is an organic compound with the molecular formula C5H11N. It is a heterocyclic amine with a six-membered ring containing five carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom. ... Ethyl is a two-carbon substituent in organic chemistry. ... In chemistry, radicals (often referred to as free radicals) are atomic or molecular species with unpaired electrons on an otherwise open shell configuration. ...

Infixes in other languages

While unusual in English, infixes are common in Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages. For example, in Tagalog, a grammatical form similar to the active voice is formed by adding the infix <um> near the beginning of a verb. Tagalog has borrowed the English word graduate as a verb; to say "I graduated" a speaker uses the derived form grumaduate. The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... The Austroasiatic languages are a large language family of Southeast Asia and India. ... Tagalog (pronunciation: ) is one of the major languages of the Republic of the Philippines. ... Voice, in grammar, is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ...

Arabic uses a common infix, <ت> <t> for Form VIII verbs, usually a reflexive of Form I. It is placed after the first consonant of the root; an epenthetic i- prefix is also added since words cannot begin with a consonant cluster. An example is اجتهد ijtahada "he worked hard", from جهد jahada "he strove". (The words "ijtihad" and "jihad" are nouns derived from these two verbs.) Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Arabic is a Semitic language. ... Reflexive voice refers to where the subject of a sentence is both the subject and an object or indirect object of the sentence. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... ROOT is an object-oriented software package developed by CERN. It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also commonly used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining. ... In poetry and phonetics, epenthesis (, from Greek epi on + en in + thesis putting) is the insertion of a consonant, a vowel, or a whole syllable into a word, usually to facilitate pronunciation. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... For other uses, see Jihad (disambiguation). ...

In Seri some verbs form the plural stem with infixation of <tóo> after the first vowel of the root; compare the singular stem ic 'plant (verb)' with the plural stem itóoc. Examples: itíc 'did s/he plant it?' and ititóoc 'did they sow it?'. Seri (referred to as cmiique iitom by the Seri people) is a language isolate spoken by the Seri people in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico. ...

Other processes called infixation

Tmesis is sometimes considered a type of infixation. It is found in English profanity, such as infuckingcredible and absobloodylutely. However, it may be disqualified since the inserted element is a lexical word rather than a suffix. See the article expletive infixation. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up Profanity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In linguistics, a lexical word belongs to one of the open parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. ... Expletive infixation is a process by which an expletive or profanity is inserted into a word, usually for intensification. ...

Note that sequences of prefixes or suffixes do not result in infixes: An infix must be internal to a single morpheme. Thus the word originally, formed by adding the suffix -ly to original, does not turn the suffix -al into an infix. There is simply a sequence of two suffixes, origin-al-ly. In order for -al- to be considered an infix, it would have to be inserted in the non-existent word *originly. The "infixes" in the tradition of Bantu linguistics are generally sequences of prefixes of this type, though there may be debate over specific cases. In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. ... A suffix is an affix that follows the morphemes to which it can attach. ... Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu vs. ...

The Semitic languages have a form of ablaut (changing the vowels within words, as in English sing, sang, sung, song) which is sometimes called infixation, as the vowels are placed within the consonants of the root, but there is often no identifiable infix common across the vocabulary. 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... In linguistics, the term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense down, reducing + Laut sound) designates a system of vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages. ...

Glossing infixes

When glossing, it is conventional to set off infixes with <angle brackets>, rather than the hyphens used to set off prefixes and suffixes. A gloss is a note made in the margins or between the lines of a book, in which the meaning of the text in its original language is explained in another language. ...

See also

• Affix
• Tmesis
• Clitic
• Expletive infixation
• Tree traversal