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

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

which is why one must practice their swearing...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm, tmesis. Along with zeugma and litotes, my favourite rhetorical figures. As much for the words, of course, as for their meanings - and of course for the fact that litotes and toilets are the only known anagrams of T S Eliot.

[sovay]

Along with zeugma and litotes, my favourite rhetorical figures.

lesser_celery asked me years ago to write a piece titled "Zeugma." I still haven't been able to. I really should.

Litotes always makes me think of littoral, even with the difference in spelling right there in front of me. It's a shorelike word.

and of course for the fact that litotes and toilets are the only known anagrams of T S Eliot.

There is such an obvious remark to be made here, I am going to resist it in the knowledge that everyone else got there first.

[sovay]

which is why one must practice their swearing...

Truly, a misplaced infix is just embarrassing.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

its when you dont repeat yourself in a rant, and still be creative.

I was in awe of people I worked with in the Navy, for their sheer audacity in their cussing. It flowed!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Bravo. I applaud your restraint: half the art of conversation lies in those things that we do not actually say.

[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.)

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

This really came out during the first draft of Motherfucking Pirates - the amount of time I spent just reading sentence after sentence to figure where I needed to place the fucks.

Yeah, there's nothing I can do to redeem that last sentence.

[sovay]

Yeah, there's nothing I can do to redeem that last sentence.

Apologize for nothing. When you write Motherfucking Pirates, there is no quarter given.

(Just a lot of fucks.)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

When he asked "what in Heaven?" she made no reply,
Up her mind, and a dash for the door.

I love rhetoric.

Nine

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The misplaced infixes are fascinating. So is the rule about stress that you have to stick the infix in before the stressed syllable? That works for "a whole nother" too, though as your Wikipedia says, sticking "whole" in at that point has more to do with parsing "another" as "a nother" instead of "an other" than it does with stresses, most likely.

I like the stress theory. It explains why you can't stick "fuck" into a word when the stress is on the first syllable and have it work. It'll work with "tremendous" but not with "masterful," although "masterfuckingful" is an entertaining misfire.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That sentence actually looks like it belongs in a tumblr tag, where they talk about all the fucks not given, etc.

[sovay]

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

Aww.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

English uses infixes so rarely that I am happy to see them under any circumstances, and that Wikipedia article's support of a-whole-nother under my own theory pleases me very much. (I mean, the alternative theory is "it's just wrong," so just about any linguist is going to be better than that, but negativity's what I see mostly.)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Very nice. I'd not thought about tmesis since taking linguistics in college.

[sovay]

I love rhetoric.

There's zeugma in Schmekel's "FTM at the DMV"! "You're full of pastrami and societal shame."

[sovay]

So is the rule about stress that you have to stick the infix in before the stressed syllable?

I believe so, although I'd hazard there's a qualifier that if it makes a hash of morphological boundaries in the process, a native English-speaker will find somewhere else to throw it. I think one of the reasons unbelievfuckingable sounds wrong is that even without an explicit knowledge of adjectival formation, the listener notices that the expletive has been dropped between the stem and the suffix of the adjective (believ-able), which should really be one unit. Unfuckingbelievable is simple because it's just splitting the adjective and its negation, but even if the infix is postponed a syllable on from the privative un-, the core sense of the word is preserved when it picks back up again after the expletive. [F]uckingable is meaningless in a way that even the truncated -lievable isn't. I feel there should be a lot more technical language in this post, but I would have to go looking for it right now.

[sovay]

and that Wikipedia article's support of a-whole-nother under my own theory pleases me very much.

Wikipedia is definitely a step up from "Because I said so!"

I wish we had more tmesis in English. I have always liked it.

[sovay]

I'd not thought about tmesis since taking linguistics in college.

It was one of the first rhetorical devices I learned after simile and metaphor and the other ones you learn in sixth grade.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No no, I like it just the way you have it, with a minimum of technical language. I'm very sure you're right and that there are specialized terms for most of the things you've described, but I like that everyday language got the meaning across, and I suspect I understand better for there *not* being specialized terms.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

It was one of the first rhetorical devices I learned after simile and metaphor and the other ones you learn in sixth grade.

It's funny how that is--I learnt simile and metaphor and such in sixth grade as well.

I think I knew the concept of tmesis long before I knew the word for it.

And now I'm curious if it exists at all in other languages that I have. The Wikipedia article doesn't have equivalents in any language that I know, barring perhaps that I can kind of puzzle out written Catalan if it's not too complicated. And I almost think the Catalan is saying that it's something to do with extra words between verses of a poem, but that may be because my ability to puzzle out Catalan is outmatched.

Good night!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Cryptic crossword clue: He confused not a few toilets.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

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

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Terrific!

There's zeugma in Schmekel? Is there smegma?

Nine