Definition:
A letter or group of letters added to the end of a word or root (i.e., a base form), serving to form a new word or functioning as an inflectional ending. Adjective: suffixal.
There are two types of suffix in English:
- A derivational suffix (such as the addition of -ly to an adjective to form an adverb) indicates what type of word it is.
- An inflectional suffix (such as the addition of -s to a noun to form a plural) tells something about the word's grammatical behavior.
See also:
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to fasten underneath"Examples and Observations:
- "Good things don't end in -eum; they end in -mania or -teria."
(Homer Simpson, The Simpsons) - "It is often possible to tell the era of a product's development by its termination. Thus products dating from the 1920s and early 1930s often end in -ex (Pyrex, Cutex, Kleenex, Windex), while those ending in -master (Mixmaster, Toastmaster) generally betray a late-1930s or early-1940s genesis."
(Bill Bryson, Made in America. Harper, 1994) - "Gazebo: The name is an 18th-century joke word combining 'gaze' with the Latin suffix 'ebo,' meaning 'I shall.'"
(Encyclopedia Britannica Online) - "Primary school children would be better at spelling if they were taught about morphemes--the units of meaning that form words--researchers claim today. . . .
"For instance, the word 'magician' consists of two morphemes: the stem 'magic' and the suffix 'ian.'
"Children find the word difficult to spell because the third syllable sounds like 'shun.' But if they knew it was made up of the two morphemes, they could make more sense of the way it is spelled, researchers suggest."
(Anthea Lipsett, "Spelling: Break Words Up Into Units of Meaning." The Guardian, Nov. 25, 2008) - "I've heard of many chocoholics, but I ain't never seen no 'chocohol.' We got an epidemic, people: people who like chocolate but don't understand word endings. They're probably 'over-workaholled.'"
(Demetri Martin, 2007) - "Suffixes display all kinds of relationships between form, meaning, and function. Some are rare and have only vague meanings, as with the -een in velveteen. Some have just enough uses to suggest a meaning, as with -iff in bailiff, plaintiff, suggesting someone involved with law."
(Tom McArthur, The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) - "Call it a vast linguistic conspiracy: proponents of the major conspiracy theories of the day--the truthers, the birthers, the deathers--share a suffix that makes them all sound like whackdoodles. 'It looks like conspiracy theorists might acquire a permanent suffix in -er, just like political scandals now have a permanent suffix in -gate,' Victor Steinbok, a frequent contributor to the American Dialect Society’s online discussion board, observed recently in that forum. . . .
"Today’s -er groups are not -ists; their beliefs are not -isms or -ologies, theories of social organization like communism or fields of study like sociology. Nor are they -ites, devout followers of a domineering visionary figure, like Trotskyites, Benthamites or Thatcherites. The -ers, the caricature asserts, are not sophisticated enough for that. That is perhaps why -er words, long before truther, have been used to deride political opponents, as in tree hugger, bra burner and evildoer--not to mention the catch-alls for extremists, wingers and nutters (from wing nut)."
(Leslie Savan, "From Simple Noun to Handy Partisan Put-Down." The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 18, 2009) - "The number of suffixes in Modern English is so great, and the forms of several, especially in words derived through the French from Latin, are so variable that an attempt to exhibit them all would tend to confusion."
(Walter W. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1882)
Pronunciation: SUF-icks
