Here’s a great question we got in Ask Figaro:
Hi Fig,
My sister, a college classmate of yours, recommended I ask you about the rhetorical device of attaching a suffix to a word or word fragment to associate it with a familiar incident, condition, etc. The ones I can think of are: “-gate”, from Watergate, to denote a scandal (ie. Nannygate, Contragate, fajitagate) and “-holic”, from alcoholic, to denote addiction (ie. chocoholic, workaholic). Is there a name for these and can you think of any others?
Thanks very much,
Doug
Dear Doug,
Your sister was our college classmate? As an alumnaholic, we’re curious. She must be brilliant, because we can indeed answer your question. The name for those gates and holics is bound morpheme. A morpheme is language’s version of an atom, a building block of meaning. A bound morpheme is affixed to a word to change its meaning. Hence Irangate, Monicagate, and shopaholic.
Warning: a morpheme can be addictive. See this. Still want to see more?
- “Tron”: you got your electron, your cyclotron, and your robot-like waitron (called “server” in finer restaurants).
- “Ize”: energize, idionize, idolize
- “Uber”: replaces “super” or “ultra” for far more annoying effect
- “Athon”: walkathon, eatathon, shopathon
Now, did you really mean it when you wrote in a separate email that you’d buy copies of Thank You for Arguing for every family member if Figaro could answer your question? Well, we think that’s just uber!
Fig.