Infix

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Infix

An infix is an affix

Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
inserted inside a stem (an existing word). It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.

ish has very few true infixes (as opposed to tmesis, see below), and those it does have are marginal. A few are heard in colloquial speech, and a couple more are found in technical terminology

Technical terminology

Technical terminology is the specialized vocabulary of a field, the nomenclature. These terms have specific definitions within the field, which is not necessarily the same as their meaning in common use....
.

e unusual in English, infixes are common in Austronesian

Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia....
and Austroasiatic languages.

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Encyclopedia

An infix is an affix

Affix

Infixes in English

English has very few true infixes (as opposed to tmesis, see below), and those it does have are marginal. A few are heard in colloquial speech, and a couple more are found in technical terminology

Technical terminology

The infix ‹iz› or ‹izn› is characteristic of hip-hop slang, for example hizouse for house and shiznit for shit
Shit

Shit in its literal meaning is usually considered a vulgarity and profanity in English language. As a noun it refers to feces matter and as a verb it means to defecation or defecate in; in the plural it means diarrhea....
. Infixes also occur in some language game
Language game

A language game is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others....
s. The ‹ma› infix, whose location in the word is described in Yu (2004), gives a word an ironic
Irony

Irony is a Literary technique or rhetorical device, in which there is an wiktionary:incongruous or wiktionary:discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood....
pseudo-sophistication, as in sophistimacated, saxomaphone, and edumacation.
Chemical nomenclature
IUPAC nomenclature

IUPAC nomenclature is a system of naming chemical compounds and of describing the science of chemistry in general. It is developed and kept up to date under the auspices of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry ....
includes the infixes ‹pe›, signifying complete hydrogen
Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the chemical symbol H. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, nonmetallic, tasteless, highly combustion and explosive Diatomic molecule gas with the molecular formula H2....
ation (from piperidine
Piperidine

Piperidine is an organic compound with the molecular formula 5NH. This heterocyclic compound amine consists of a six-membered ring containing five methylene units and one nitrogen atom....
), and ‹et› (from ethyl), signifying the ethyl
Ethyl group

In chemistry, an ethyl group is an alkyl functional group derived from ethane . It has the chemical formula -Carbon2Hydrogen5 and is very often abbreviated -Et....
radical
Radical (chemistry)

In chemistry, radicals are atoms, molecules or ions with unpaired electrons on an otherwise open shell configuration. These unpaired electrons are usually highly chemical reaction, so radicals are likely to take part in chemical reactions....
C₂H₅. Thus from the existing word picoline is derived pipecoline, and from lutidine is derived lupetidine; from phenidine and xanthoxylin are derived phenetidine and xanthoxyletin.

Infixes in other languages

While unusual in English, infixes are common in Austronesian

Austronesian languages

Tagalog language

Tagalog is one of the major languages used in the Philippines. It is a basis for the Filipino language, which is the principal language of the national television and radio, though broadsheet newspapers are almost completely in English....
, a grammatical form similar to the active voice is formed by adding the infix ‹um› near the beginning of a verb. Tagalog has borrowed the English word graduate as a verb; to say "I graduated" a speaker uses the derived form grumaduate.

Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
uses a common infix, ‹?› ‹t› for Form VIII verbs

Arabic grammar

Arabic is a Semitic languages language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic - the Arabic grammar ....
, usually a reflexive of Form I. It is placed after the first consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx....
of the root

Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant body that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial root or aerating ....
; an epenthetic

Epenthesis

In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence and anaptyxis ....
i- prefix is also added since words cannot begin with a consonant cluster. An example is ????? ijtahada "he worked hard", from ??? jahada "he strove". (The words "ijtihad

Ijtihad

Ijtihad is a technical term of Sharia that describes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah....
" and "jihad

Jihad

Jihad , an List of Islamic terms in Arabic, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic language, the word jihad is a noun meaning "struggle." Jihad appears frequently in the Qur'an and common usage as the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of Allah "....
" are nouns derived from these two verbs.)

In Seri

Seri language

Seri is a language isolate spoken by the Seri in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico....
some verbs form the plural stem with infixation of ‹tóo› after the first vowel of the root; compare the singular stem ic 'plant (verb)' with the plural stem itóoc. Examples: itíc 'did s/he plant it?' and ititóoc 'did they sow it?'.

Other processes called infixation

Tmesis

Tmesis is a linguistic phenomenon or figure of speech in which a word is separated into two parts, with other words occurring between them....
is sometimes considered a type of infixation. It is found in English profanity

Profanity

The original meaning of the adjective profane referred to items not belonging to the church, e.g. "The fort is the oldest profane building in the town, but the local monastery is older, and is the oldest sacred building," or "besides designing churches, he also designed many profane buildings"....
, such as fanfuckingtastic and absobloodylutely. However, it is often disqualified since the inserted element is a lexical word rather than an affix. See the article expletive infixation

Expletive infixation

Expletive infixation is a process by which an expletive or profanity is inserted into a word, usually for intensification. It is similar to tmesis, but not all instances are covered by the usual definition of tmesis because the words are not necessarily compound ....
.

Sequences of adfixes (prefixes or suffixes) do not result in infixes: An infix must be internal to a word stem

Word stem

In linguistics, a stem is the part of a word that is common to all its inflection variants. Stems are often root , e.g. atomic, its root is atom, but its stem is atom?ic....
. Thus the word originally, formed by adding the suffix -ly to original, does not turn the suffix -al into an infix. There is simply a sequence of two suffixes, origin-al-ly. In order for -al- to be considered an infix, it would have to have been inserted in the non-existent word *originly. The "infixes" in the tradition of Bantu

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo languages family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree....
linguistics are often sequences of prefixes of this type, though there may be debate over specific cases.

The Semitic languages

Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
have a form of ablaut (changing the vowels within words, as in English sing, sang, sung, song) which is sometimes called infixation, as the vowels are placed between the consonants of the root. However, this interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix is more often called transfix

Transfix

In linguistics morphology , a transfix is a discontinuous affix, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a Nonconcatenative morphology with a discontinuous affix....
ation.

See also interfix

Interfix

Interfix is a term in linguistics and more specifically, morphology . It describes an affix which is placed in between two other morphemes and does not have a semantics meaning....
.

Glossing infixes

When glossing, it is conventional to set off infixes with , rather than the hyphens used to set off prefixes and suffixes:

sh‹izn›it, saxo‹ma›phone, pi‹pe›coline

Compare:

origin-al-ly