Have you brought gold? Have you brought silver to set me free?

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[zdenka]

Tmesis is fun. I too have fond memories of learning about Latin rhetorical devices in high school. After reading that infamous line in the Aeneid which has someone's skull being split open (cere . . . . somethingsomething . . . brum), I thought it was really neat and told my little brother about it. Later he asked me to look at a story he'd written, and it turned out to involve a battle scene in which the hero found his enemy with his sk split ull. It was really kind of adorable. (He did change it back to normal English after I'd seen it.)

[sovay]

a battle scene in which the hero found his enemy with his sk split ull.

Aww.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

There he was with his sk split ull, and they could do nothing at the hos-pit-al...