Definition:
The separation of the parts of a compound word by another word or words. Adjective: tmetic.
Related to tmesis is synchesis, the jumbling of word order in an expression.
See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "a cutting"Examples and Observations:
- "Whoopdee-damn-doo, Bruce thought. At most newspapers, general assignment reporters were newsroom royalty, given the most important stories. At the East Lauderdale Tattler, they were a notch above janitors, and burdened with lowly tasks . . .."
(Ken Kaye, Final Revenge. AuthorHouse, 2008) - "This is not Romeo, he's some other where."
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) - "In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood."
(John Donne, "Hymn to Christ, at the Author's Last Going Into Germany") - "Most often, tmesis is applied to compounds of 'ever.' 'Which way so ever man refer to it' (Milton); 'that man--how dearly ever parted' (Troilus and Cressida 3.3.96); 'how heinous e'er it be,/To win thy after-love I pardon thee' (Richard II 5.3.34). However, the syllable of any word can be separated: 'Oh so lovely sitting abso-blooming-lutely still' (A. Lerner and F. Lowe, My Fair Lady). Or 'See his wind--lilycocks--laced' (G.M. Hopkins, 'Harry Ploughman'). Tmesis is also commonly used in terms of British slang, such as 'hoo-bloody-ray.'"
(A. Quinn, "Tmesis." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, ed. by T. Enos. Taylor & Francis, 1996) - "It's a sort of long cocktail--he got the formula off a barman in Marrakesh or some-bloody-where."
(Kingsley Amis, Take a Girl Like You, 1960) - old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs) &
youth yanks them
down(old
age
cries No
Tres) & (pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
scolds Forbid
den Stop
Must
n't Don't
&) youth goes
right on
gr
owing old
(E.E. Cummings, "old age sticks") - "I did summon up the courage to poke a camera through Terry Adams's front gate last year, only to be met with a minder's greeting: 'Why don't you leave us a-f---ing-lone.' I wonder if the brute was aware of his use of tmesis, the insertion of one word into another?"
(Martin Brunt, "How Terror Has Changed the Crime Beat." The Guardian, Nov. 26, 2007) - The Split Infinitive as Tmesis
"A split infinitive has been elsewhere defined as a type of syntactic tmesis in which a word, especially an adverb, occurs between to and the infinitival form of a verb. Different labels have been used to name this particular ordering of English, spiked adverb or cleft infinitive among others, but the term split infinitive has eventually superseded all its predecssors (Smith 1959: 270)."
(Javier Calle-Martin and Antonio Miranda-Garcia, "On the Use of Split Infinitives in English." Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments, ed. by Antoinette Renouf and Andrew Kehoe. Rodopi, 2009)
Pronunciation: (te-)ME-sis
Also Known As: infix, tumbarumba (Australia)
