Discover Top Posts Tagged with #infixes

Popular Recent

Settle an argument: where do you infix "fucking" in the name of Kalamazoo, Michigan?

Kalafuckingmazoo

Kalamafuckingzoo

Other (I'm a big weirdo)

I have no strong opinions about fucking Kalamazoo

Voting ended onSep 17, 2025

#language #linguistics #word nerdery #infixes #swearing #polls

BA Linguistics is going well

#linguistics #affixes #infixes #linguist humor

Go ahead, put anything

You probably know about suffixes and prefixes yes?

Disprove - dis is a prefix that means that that the word means the opposite of the word attached to it

Finally - ly is a suffix that mean the word is an adverb

But did you know about infixes?

Infix is a type of afix that's located in the middle of the word.

English (and Spanish I think) doesn't have this, at least formally, but Portuguese does!

An example:

If I wanted to say I'm going to eat something in English I'd say

I'm going to eat it

I'll eat it

In Portuguese you have multiple ways of going about this too.

The verb to eat is comer by the way

vou comê-lo/comê-la

Equivalent to I'm going to eat it. It's technically present describing the future. The -lo/-la are the pronouns you might use. They are gendered because in Portuguese even a cookie is gendered. It's female btw

O/A comerei

Equivalent to I'll eat it but very poetic. Not usually used in casual speach. O/A are the pronouns. Probably more common in Brazilian Portuguese.

Comê-lo-ei/comê-la-ei

Somehow more likely to be said than the second option (in Portugal at least). This option doesn't exist in English. And yes, the prounun is literally in the middle of the word. That's the infix. It's a very weird thing that's still used and I hope people don't stop using it because it's a very peculiar gramatical rule that's very funky.

That being said it is a bitch to remember.

There's some weird Portuguese contraptions.

I can say

Dar-lho-ei

And that'll mean "I'll give it to him".

That thing classifies as one word when in English it's a whole ass sentence.

You can have infixes in very colloquial English. An example is

Fan-fucking-tastic

Not exactly a word in the dictionary but it's indeed an infix.

#ask #portuguese #English #language #afixes #grammar #infixes

Abso-b████y-lutely: Expletive Infixation

There are rules in the English language that you've probably never been taught, but you know anyway: how to split apart words with "infixes". But you've never been taught it because some of those infixes are words you probably shouldn't use in front of your high school English teachers...

It’s a new Language Files video with me, Tom Scott, and Molly Ruhl! For more linguistics of swearing, check out the following Lingthusiasm episodes:

Real swear words and pseudo-swears

The grammar of swearing