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Typically (as far as I can think), the interject is something vulgar.

For example:

  • Radio-bloody-active (from an episode of Family Guy)
  • Ri-god-damn-diculuous
  • Un-fucking-believable"

What is the word for this construct?

tchrist
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Mark Rushakoff
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    A linguistics paper on Homeric infixation that may amuse you folks. – Kosmonaut Jan 12 '11 at 03:48
  • @Kosmonaut: Wow, while I was scanning the first pages, I read something about Homeric infixes and I saw a sigma, so it took me more than a minute before it dawned on me that this wasn't about Greek. I did wonder vaguely why I saw "Simpsons" from the corner of my eye, but, well, -ma[t] is an actual suffix in Greek. I should get some sleep. It was amusing indeed! – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 05:32
  • @Kosmonaut: I only skimmed over it, but that was definitely a very interesting paper. Good find! – Mark Rushakoff Jan 12 '11 at 12:11
  • @Cerberus: Yes, I love the misleading title. You probably figured this out, but in case it didn't become clear: in phonology papers, σ is the symbol used to denote a syllable. – Kosmonaut Jan 12 '11 at 15:07
  • @Kosmonaut: Thanks—to be honest, I didn't: I skipped to the conclusion when I found out they weren't real sigmas. Funnily enough, the double sigma is actually a typically Homeric/Ionic variant of Attic double tau, and a typically Homeric variant of the classical single sigma in the dative plural. Oh, and it seems strange that I don't remember using sigma for "syllable" from Greek phonology at all: I think we simply used "syllable". – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 21:48
  • Tee hee: xkcd – Marthaª Nov 14 '13 at 16:11

2 Answers2

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Besides tmesis, mentioned by Jon Purdy below, another relevant term is infixation, and fucking here could be called an infix (analogously to prefix, suffix). This specific class of examples is known as expletive infixation.

The exact demarcations of infixation and tmesis, whether they overlap, and whether expletive infixation is actually infixation, seem to be pretty debatable (see comments below). Tmesis is an older term; according to some definitions it includes split phrases as well as words (as in the marvellous West By God Virginia), and may be required to respect morpheme boundaries (so ri-goddamn-diculous would not be an example). Infixation is a more recent term, and is sometimes restricted to cases where the infix is a grammatically significant particle, not an independent word (so expletive infixation would be right out).

Decapitated Soul
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PLL
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  • I don't think there's really a debate at all. "Infixation" deals with grammatically significant affixes, while in English tmesis does not, especially in the case of (inaptly named for the purpose of my point) explative infixation, which is solely for emphasis. – Jon Purdy Jan 12 '11 at 02:23
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    Hmmm… I thought I recalled reading a post at Language Log arguing this point, claiming that excluding tmesis was stuffy and old-fashioned. I may be misremembering this, since I can’t find that post, but the Loggers’ usage does at least seem a bit more flexible between them. Here, for instance, GKP seems happy to class expletive infixation as genuine infixation. [cont’d] – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 02:37
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    The comment thread there includes three different definitions for tmesis, all slightly different. GKP says: “Tmesis is a Greek rhetorical term for a slipping-in of words between components of a phrase or word, and thus refers to a rather similar phenomenon [to infixation], yes.” Jason F. Siegel says “Tmesis is the separation of an affix from its base, usually to an independent position or to another constituent of the phrase or sentence. Infixation does not necessarily take morpheme boundaries into account,” which I guess makes un-fucking-believable tmesis but not ri-goddamn-diculous? – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 02:40
  • Xmun vividly quotes Hudson’s 1933 Modern Australian Usage: “…an ancient device called tmesis, the cleaving of a word and the insertion of some other word in the cleavage.” So… it seems to be at least a bit debatable what counts as tmesis, and whether expletive infixation is infixation, tmesis, sometimes one and sometimes t’other, or both at once. – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 02:44
  • From Wikipedia, on infix: ""Fucking" is sometimes used as an expletive infix, as in "un-fucking-believable". This can also be considered an instance of tmesis." —unless you just edited that in... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infix – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 02:48
  • Hah — no, I didn’t just edit that in :-P That wiki article also supports your separation of the two, saying “English has almost no true infixes (as opposed to tmesis, see below)…”. Hmmm. I’ll edit the answer a little, I think… – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 02:54
  • @Jon: Could you explain what you mean exactly by "grammatically significant"? I do think there are some rules about the place where expletive tmesis/infixation can do its work, such as not between onset and nucleus. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 02:54
  • @Cerberus: Oh, there are rules that apply to English tmesis, assuredly. By "grammatically significant", I meant that for an infixed word to be regarded as an infix proper, it would need to change the meaning of the containing word in the same way any grammatical prefix or suffix would, which (expletive) tmesis does not: "abso-bloody-lutely" means the same as "bloody absolutely". – Jon Purdy Jan 12 '11 at 03:03
  • @Jon Purdy: hmmm… falling back to wikipedia examples again, <iz(n)> in hip-hop slang (hizouse, shiznit) is described as an infix, and it doesn’t seem to be particularly more ‘grammatically significant’ than expletive infixation — I really don’t know hip-hop culture much, but if I understand right it acts mainly as a shibboleth, plus to add a little emphasis to the word in question? …and amusingly, the Wiki article for tmesis also includes “Linguists sometimes describe tmesis as a form of infixation,” but with a ‘weasel words’ tag and no attribution! – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 03:14
  • @Jon: Hmmm, let me see whether I understand this correctly: if a word/morpheme has the same meaning whether it is fixed to the main word or used separate from it, it is not an affix? I don't think I interpreted you correctly, because it would be easy to counter this. // P.S. I am not saying tmesis is wrong or a worse choice... just trying to get the distinction clear. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 03:20
  • @PLL: For now, I'd prefer to say it is both tmesis and and infix, until Jon convinces me... to be honest, just the fact that tmesis has a different meaning when describing Greek makes me a bit recalcitrant. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 03:26
  • @Cerberus: I think for now I’m happier to stay non-commital, and say “it’s debatable” — the three of us (and our external sources) seem to have pretty well established that if nothing else :-) – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 03:29
  • @PLL: I think I'd do the same. I am still open to persuasion by Jon, because somehow it feels different from regular infixes—I can't put my finger on it. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 03:51
  • @Cerberus: Thinking about it, I think the fairest assessment is that tmesis is infixation, but a word that has been infixed is not ipso facto an infix, and there's unfortunately no name for "that which is covered by 'infixation' less that which is covered by 'tmesis'". – Jon Purdy Jan 12 '11 at 05:35
  • @Jon: Okay, that would be a workable definition. Even so, if we cannot define the essential difference between infixed "bloody" and orthodox infixes, wouldn't it be easier to call an infix any morpheme or combination of morphemes that is or must be put inside a word? Then we could distinguish between word infixes and non-word infixes. I believe that, in Ancient Greek, if without context, we call an affix anything that is used fixed to a word most of the time; if something is actually fixed to a word, we call it an affix in that word regardless. No other definition seems to work. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 12 '11 at 05:59
  • @PLL: I'm accepting your answer because it is more comprehensive (particularly the link to expletive infixation). Thanks! – Mark Rushakoff Jan 12 '11 at 12:13
  • @Mark: Thanks! Although I’m torn — I like my answer (obviously) but Jon’s was also lovely, and beautifully concise. – PLL Jan 12 '11 at 17:01
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It's called tmesis.

Jon Purdy
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