FANFKINGTASTIC AND

EDUMACATIONAL: THE CASE

OF ENGLISH INFIXATION

CREDIT: FOX/Courtesy Neal Peters Collection

Chi Luu is a peripatetic linguist who speaks Australian English and studies dead languages.
Every two weeks, shell uncover curious stories about language from around the globe for
Lingua Obscura.

Wel-diddly-elcome to the absoschmuckinglutely crizazy world of English infixation.

Where some other languages may soberly cherish the sanctity of their word forms and
vocabulary, English is notorious for being playful and expressive with its linguistic
morphology or word-building. Well-known examples of the infixation phenomenon are
the colorfully offensive expletive infixation, the so-called Homeric ma-infixation, the
Flanderian diddly-infixation and hip hops iz/izn infixation (shiznit and the like). But
what exactly is infixation?
Most readers will already be familiar with more common word-building processes such
as prefixation and suffixation, in which an affix is added to the beginning or end of a
base word respectively. These morphological processes usually alter the
meaning, case, or part of speech of the word and so have a grammatical purpose:
Prefix de-: de + activate deactivate (the opposite of activate)
Suffix -hood: child + hood childhood (the state of being a child).
Prefixes and suffixes of course can be enthusiastically layered on top of one another,
like the long and short of semihemidemisemiquaver, yet can often still be meaningfully
reconstructed and understood, or perhaps misunderstood, or even misunderestimated.
Take note of the unwieldy pile of affixes in the case of one of the longest words in the
English language, anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism.

Infixation is yet another morphological process which occurs internally in a base word,
rather than at either end of the base. In other languages such as Tagalog, Leti and
some dialects of Mandarin, infixation is used for Very Serious and Important
grammatical functions, in similar ways to prefixation and suffixation in English,
commonly changing the grammatical use of the word.
Instances of infixation in English, however, are mostly found in non-standard vernacular
speech and usually add a playful, extra-grammatical sense to the word rather than
changing its grammatical meaning. For example, the process of expletive infixation is
used for added emotional emphasis, while ma-infixation, made famous by Homer
Simpson, as described by Alan Yu, layers a nuance of pseudo-sophisti-ma-cation onto a
word. Despite their use in slang rather than standard language, linguists have found that
these infixes follow systematic phonological rules in the way they may be placed and
these rules tell us a lot about prosodic structure and the internal linguistic knowledge of
speakers of the language.
In expletive infixation, common obscene expletives or their milder variants, such
asfucking/fuckin, freaking, flipping, effing, goddamn, damn (and bloody/blooming in
British and Australian English contexts) are inserted productively into words to express
a stronger vehemence.
1.

absolutely: abso-fucking-lutely, abso-bloody-lutely, abso-goddamn-lutely, absofreaking-lutely

2.

Minnesota: Minne-fucking-sota

3.

fantastic: fan-bloody-tastic
We can see how different expletives can be inserted in exactly the same space in the
wordabsolutely. English speakers can also quickly note that constructions such as *abfucking-solutely (infixed after the first syllable) and *fanta-bloody-stic (infixed after the
second syllable) are technically possible yet do not sound right (linguistically indicated
by an asterisk). This is the case even though the expletive happily appears after the first
syllable in fan-tastic but the second syllable after abso-lutely. They somehow violate the
unwritten rules of this infixation construction. Why is this so?

In his 1982 study on English prosodic structure and expletive infixation, John J.
McCarthy outlines how this productive process can be described in terms of certain
complex rules of word stress placement and metrical feet. To simplify matters, the
expletive infix may be placed preceding a stressed foot of a word. The stress happens
to occur on the third syllable ofabsolutely and the second in fantastic and so dictates
where the expletive infix can be placed. This idea is discussed and developed further
in Alan C. L. Yus 2004 paper Reduplication in English Homeric Infixation, in which he
gives the following examples of the ma-infixation construction:
1.

saxophone: saxo-ma-phone

2.

secretary: secre-ma-tary

3.

Mississippi: Missi-ma-ssippi

4.

hippopotamus: hippo-ma-potamus
Whats interesting is that native English speakers will already have absorbed
a knowledge and intuition of how to apply these infixation processes to new words and
constructions without actually knowing any overt rules of metrical stress. Speakers will
also know where not to apply the infix. For example, for a word that may not commonly
appear with an expletive infix in slang, such as instantiate, in-fucking-stantiate will
naturally sound right to an English speaker and not right as *inst-fuckin-antiate, as we
can see in the following novel examples from McCarthys paper:

1.

amalga-bloody-mated

2.

emanci-motherfuckin-pator

3.

every-bloody-body

4.

handi-bloody-cap

5.

hypo-bloody-crite

6.

kinder-goddamn-garten

7.

Lauder-damn-dale

Similar processes such as Ned Flanders diddly-infixation (in words such as wel-diddlyelcome) and the iz/izn construction found in hip hop slang, in words like shiznit,
hizouse, show further how regular morphological processes used grammatically in other
languages can be employed playfully in English to extend a words expressive sense.
Though these non-standard slang forms may be fun and inventive, they still do follow
rules of English word-building, which we happen to know already, though we may not be
aware of it. So the more we play with these types of word constructions, the more
evidence well have to further edumacate ourselves about some of these hidden rules of
language.