This is the best comic I have ever seen about tmesis in the English language and also nearly identical to the example we were given in Latin III, except that instead of ridiculous the host word was unbelievable. It's an actual morphological rule; I believe in English it has to do with syllabic stress (in Latin, it's more strictly the splitting—τμῆσις—of a compound word). No one should have been surprised that it led to a brief fad of students saying unbelievfuckingable just to be difficult. Dr. Fiveash also spoke fondly of the emphatic possibilities of reduplication: unbe . . . believable, which I have never actually used in conversation no matter my level of incredulity, but I appreciate having been told in my junior year of high school that I could.
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Active Entries
- 1: When I invited Frank and you back to mine for a mange tout when I meant ménage à trois
- 2: Well, you can't tell much from faces
- 3: The shadows on the walls don't recognize me anymore
- 4: This po-mo stuff is nice, but it's irrelevant to the way I feel right now
- 5: Be my hand on the oar to row to eternity
- 6: Now I'm walking round the city just waiting to come to
- 7: You know this city like the back of your hand, but deep roots are holding me down
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- Style: Classic for Refried Tablet by and
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