"Science fiction-y"

Question

I recently saw a TED Talk in which the speaker used the term "science fiction-y", making an adjective out of "science fiction". Is it ok to form your own adjectives in that way? If so, should there be a hyphen before the y (as there was in the captions). Are there other examples of similar constructs with a '-y' added to a term (rather than a single word)? Would science fiction-like be a better choice?

Answer 1

There are at once no examples of similar constructs and an infinite number of them. The speaker was not so much coining a new term as employing a nonce word, a word invented to serve an immediate communications need.

Literary nonsense words are a commonly taught category: vorpal, runcible, cromulent. More prosaically, however, it is common to use nonce words in the absence of a more-established or better-known word or phrase. As there is no common term for sharing characteristics of science fiction, the speaker has added the adjective-producing suffix -y (e.g. sunny, fluffy, tricky) to produce one that the audience will understand even if it is not in common usage. The intent is not to establish new terminology, but merely to move the conversation along.

Essentially every word in the language can be modified in this way, especially in casual communication, but only rarely do these words become fully lexicalized and make their way into dictionaries or other references.

The broader linguistic concept of the use of a grammatical process or pattern with new words and phrases is productivity. The suffix -y is a productive suffix because a native speaker will generally understand its use to create an adjective (or noun or diminutive, in other cases) from a word, even if unfamiliar with the word. The speaker could alternatively have said science fiction-ish, for example; -ish is another productive adjectival suffix indicating something with qualities like or associated with the root.

A web search will turn up various lists of productive, semi-productive, and non-productive prefixes and suffixes in English, but which suffix you choose for a particular word depends on factors ranging from ease of pronunciation to similarity with more established words. For instance, the speaker might have considered science fiction-some too distracting, as -some is less productive than -y, even though we have common words like troublesome and tiresome that originate in it. In other situations, however, it might have been preferred for contrast or irony. Like any word choice, such matters come down to the speaker or author's taste and the specific need the word is supposed to meet, and are well outside the scope of this site. Some past questions on this site include Guidelines for selecting suffix when making an adjective out of a proper name (-esque, -ean, -ian, and What are the limits of using the suffix "-esque"?

As for transcription, I would say the hyphen is not strictly necessary for understanding, but it helps communicate that the word is a nonce. Without it, the reader might consider it an error instead of the intended word, as science fiction-y is not a term in general usage. Depending on the style in use, quotation marks, italicization, or other mechanical distinctions may also be appropriate.