Look up tmesis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Tmesis is a linguistic phenomenon or figure of speech in which a word is separated into two parts, with other words occurring between them.^[1] Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetoric, or elocution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. ...

Tmesis of compound verbs

Tmesis of prefixed verbs (whereby the prefix is separated from the simple verb) was an original feature of the Ancient Greek language, common in Homer (and later poetry), but not used in Attic prose. Such separable verbs are also part of the normal grammatical usage of some modern languages, such as German. Note: This article contains special characters. ... Homer (Greek: ) is the name given to the supposed unitary author of the early Greek poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Attic Greek is the ancient dialect of the Greek language that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. ... A separable verb is a verb that is composed of a verb stem and a separable affix. ...

Tmesis is found as a poetic or rhetorical device in classical Latin poetry, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses. Words such as circumdare, to surround, are split apart with other words of the sentence in between, e.g. circum virum dant: "they surround the man". This device is used in this way to create a visual image of surrounding the man by means of the words on the line. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC – Tomis, now Constanţa AD 17), a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women and mythological transformations. ... Disambiguation: This article is about the poem Metamorphoses written by the poet Ovid. ...

Tmesis in Ancient Greek

Tmesis in Ancient Greek is somewhat of a misnomer, since there is not necessarily a splitting of the prefix from the verb; rather the consensus now seems to be that the separate prefix or pre-verb reflects a stage in the language where the prefix had not yet joined on to the verb. There are many examples in Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, both of which preserve archaic features. One common and oft-cited example is κατα δακρυα λειβων kata dakrua leibôn "shedding tears", in which the pre-verb κατα kata "down" has not yet joined the verbal participle λειβων leibôn "shedding". In later Greek, these would combine to form the compound verb καταλειβων kataleibôn "shedding (in a downwards direction)". Note: This article contains special characters. ... title page of the Rihel edition of ca. ... Beginning of the Odyssey The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια (Odússeia) ) is one of the two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to the Ionian poet Homer. ...

Tmesis in English

One kind of tmesis involves the insertion of a word or phrase into another word, often for humorous effect. The insertion may occur between the parts of a compound word, or between syllable boundaries (dystmesis). A compound is a word (lexeme) that consists of more than one free morpheme. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ...

It is also referred to as tumbarumba, possibly due to the popularity of tmesis in Australian speech (Tumbarumba being an Australian town), or possibly due to the poem "Tumba Bloody Rumba" by John O'Grady, which includes several tmeses including "Tumba-bloody-rumba", "e-bloody-nough", and "kanga-bloody-roos".^[2] Tumbarumba is a small town in New South Wales, Australia, about 500 kilometers southwest of Sydney. ... John OGrady is an Australian writer. ...

Linguists sometimes describe tmesis as a form of infixation. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Examples

Representative English examples include: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

• "Abso-fuckin-lutely",^[3] in which an expletive or profanity is inserted; see Expletive infixation
• "Congratu-fuckin'-lations", another expletive infixation.
• "La-dee-freakin'-da", a variation of the above in which a less offensive infix is substituted. This phrase was made famous by fictional character Matt Foley, portrayed by Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live.
• "Earvin 'Magic' Johnson, Jr.", in which a nickname is inserted between a first and last name.
• "Wel-diddly-elcome", a signature phrase of fictional character Ned Flanders', where a nonsense word is inserted. Note the reduplication of part of the host word.
• "Any-old-how", in which the divisibility of "anything" (as in "any old thing") is mimicked with the usually indivisible "anyhow".
• "A-whole-nother", in which another (an+other) is reanalyzed as a+nother.

The word expletive is currently used in three senses: syntactic expletives, expletive attributives, and bad language. The word expletive comes from the Latin verb explere, meaning to fill, via expletivus, filling out. It was introduced into English in the seventeenth century to refer to various kinds of padding -- the padding... Look up Profanity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Expletive infixation is a process by which an expletive or profanity is inserted into a word, usually for intensification. ... Matt Foley portrayed by Chris Farley. ... Christopher Crosby Farley (February 15, 1964 – December 18, 1997) was an American actor and comedian. ... Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a weekly late night 91-minute American comedy-variety show based in New York City that has been broadcast live by NBC on Saturday nights since October 11, 1975. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ...

See also

• Affix
• Clitic
• Lexical diffusion
• Expletive infixation
• Diacope

Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ... In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. ... Expletive infixation is a process by which an expletive or profanity is inserted into a word, usually for intensification. ... Diacope is a rhetorical term meaning uninterrupted repetition of a word, or repetition with only one or two words between each repeated phrase. ...

References

1. ^ The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press (1992), p. 1044 (ISBN 0-19-214183-X)
2. ^ Tumba Bloody Rumba
3. ^ quote by Mr. Big from "Sex and the City", at IMDB