Tag Archives: Grammar

The fan-bloody-tastic world of grammar

All of you  know all about prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are added to the front of a word to change its meaning (ex-, pre-, anti-). Suffixes are added to the end of a word to create a new word (-ism, -acy, -ship). English speakers love to be creative with language and constantly invent new words.

But even the most ghastly grammar ghouls among you probably don’t know about infixes?. Far rarer, this is when a part of speech is inserted into an existing word.

The most common example of this is when an expletive is added in this way. e.g. abso-bloody-lutely. This is known as Timesis. Extra-bloody-ordinary what you can learn, eh?
This article explains it all.
http://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2008/11/03/tmesis-how-ned-flanders-…

Thousands of people do this all the time but very, very few of them know the grammatical term. Now you do!

Want to have some fun with prefixes and suffixes? Try this BBC site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/prefixes-and-suffixes