fractomorpheme

English

Examples (linguistics)

Etymology

Borrowed from French fractomorphème, itself coined by French linguist Jean Tournier. By surface analysis, fracto- +‎ morpheme.

Noun

fractomorpheme (plural fractomorphemes)

  1. (linguistics) A productive morpheme (one which readily forms new words) which originates as a shortened form of another word.
    • 2018, Michael Dow, “A corpus study of phonological factors in novel English blends”, in Proceedings of the 2018 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association‎[1], Ottawa: Canadian Linguistic Association, archived from the original on 17 January 2024, page 13:
      In sum, "pussy blends" are more likely to fall into the category of secreted affixation, in which case -ussy would have become, however ephemerally, a fractomorpheme (cf. Watergate > -gate).
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