jheem noted here that the word omnibus, meaning a certain form of transportation, has become bus. He added, "The only other suffix I know of that's been elevated to word status is ism."

How about (taxi)cab?

Cab's a word, an abbreviation from cabriolet. Two other affixes into words I've run across are pros and cons. And for the record, the suffix in omnibus is -ibus. In Mexican Spanish, -teria has become a kind of suffix (originally from cafeteria) added to other words; my favorite is washeteria for 'coin-operated laundromat'. Suffixes are endings to words either for inflection as in -s for third person singular present indicative or for derivation as in -ness for turning an adjective into an abstract noun: e.g., kindness. Suffixes, at least in inflectional languages, are what are usually called bound morphemes, in that they cannot occur by themselves such as words (lexemes, aka free morphemes).

Taxi, though,comes from taximeter, the device that was used to record the distance travelled and thus charged . In fact, the original name for the cab was a "taximeter cab"

Half the world now seem to call them "taxis" and the other half "cabs". In London we use both names.

Yes, but neither taxi(meter) nor cab(riolet) is an affix (pre-, in-, or suffix). And I was being sloppy in my entry above. Inflectional endings are usually called desinences, rather than suffixes. Taximeter comes from the German taxameter < Latin taxa 'tax' + meter 'measure' < Greek meteron.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jheem,

Burger is a short form of Hamburger.

Word History: Because the world has eaten countless hamburgers, the origins of the name may be of interest to many. By the middle of the 19th century people in the port city of Hamburg, Germany, enjoyed a form of pounded beef called Hamburg steak. The large numbers of Germans who migrated to North Americaduring this time probably brought the dish and its name along with them. The entrée may have appeared on an American menu as early as 1836, although the first recorded use of Hamburg steak is not found until 1884. The variant form hamburger steak, using the German adjective Hamburger meaning “from Hamburg,” first appears in a Walla Walla,
Washington, newspaper in 1889. By 1902 we find the first description of a Hamburg steak close to our conception of the hamburger, namely a recipe calling for ground beef mixed with onion and pepper. By then the hamburger was on its way, to be followed much later by the shortened form burger, used in forming cheeseburger and the names of other variations on the basic burger, as well as on its own.

I always learn something new from jheem. I hadn't heard of "disinences" before, but the dictionary describes them as being, "A grammatical ending; an inflection." An inflection I can see, but what is meant by a "grammatical ending?"

An inflection I can see, but what is meant by a "grammatical ending?"

Inflected languages, like Russian, Greek, Latin, German, or to a lesser degree English build words up in a systematic way: i.e., take a root, add any affixes you need, and then inflect via desinences. For example, rediscovers < re- (prefix) 'again' + discover (verb / root) + -s (3PS pres ind verbal ending / inflection). Also -s as a plural marker (number) is a grammatical ending / inflection / desinence. The -er in (Ham)burger is a suffix meaning 'inhabitant of, pertaining to' when used with a city name, (cf. Wiener == Viennese, Frankfurter == somebody or -thing from Frankfurt). The branch of linguistics that concerns itself with endings / inflections / desinences, etc., is called morphology (aka Wortbildung in German). In inflected languages, nouns are declined and verbs are conjugated. Some pretty popular languages aren't inflected at all: cf. Chinese. There's an old typological distinction of languages that started in the early 19th century with Humboldt: inflectional (Latin), analytic (Chinese), agglutinative (Turkish), and polysynthetic (Innuit). More information here.

I believe that taxi came from the Taxis family, who were Renaissance bankers in Germany or Austria (I believe). To support their banking, they ran a courier service. It is from the courier service that our notion of the taxi evolved.

The Taxis were pretty much bankrupted when the Holy Roman Emporer (Charles V or his son or father, I am not sure which) defaulted on the loans he owed the Taxis and other bankers.

I to have read that taximeter might be related to the Thurn und Taxis family. (The princely family still exists, and they were the hereditary postmasters general of the Holy Roman Empire.) But others, including the OED and the AHD, think its etymology was as I gave above from VL taxa. The first citations for tax in this sense are from the 14th century. One would have to account for the spelling in German (the language that coined it) with an a: taxameter. The name Taxis came from an Italian family Tassis.

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Half the world now seem to call them "taxis" and the other half "cabs". In London we use both names.

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It's pretty much the same in the Toronto area. I use the two words interchangably.

The taxameter was invented in 1891 by the German Wilhelm Bruhn. Taxis before this were known as hackneys and cabriolets. I think that the Thurn und Taxis connection is a folk etymology. (I could be wrong.)

> The only other suffix I know of that's been elevated to word status is ism

ish

You probably never saw it in the US but there was a TV ad over here for a telephone company that featured Maureen Lipman as a doting Jewish mother whose son had done disasterously in his school exams but had justpassed one - sociology, I think.

It finished with the line.

"An ology, he got an ology."

Inflected languages, like Russian, Greek, Latin, German, or to a lesser degree English build words up in a systematic way: i.e., take a root, add any affixes you need, and then inflect via desinences.

I thought all this talk we've had previously about "inflections" pertained to the inflection of a part of a word in its pronunciation. Now, this makes a lot more sense.

It's pretty much the same in the Toronto area. I use the two words interchangably.

We use "taxi" and "cab" interchangeably here in the U.S., too.

the inflection of a part of a word in its pronunciation

That is one meaning of the word inflection, but not one that linguists tend to think of when they use the term.

But, of course, that was my point, jheem. All this time, I have thought it to mean the pronunciation definition. That's one reason why I had been so confused with this post. I remember thinking, "What do inflections have to do with grammar anyway?" But, of course, I didn't want to sound stupid and ask, so I didn't.

Now I get it.

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Originally posted by BobHale:
"An ology, he got an ology."

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That has the ring of William Warburton's quip, "Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy."

You might think from this that doxy was a suffix that had become a word, but in fact it has a different meaning.

Thought of another one: in fan fiction writers often concentrate on a particular relationship, such as Ron/Hermione or Spock/Kirk. The fanfic term for this is pairing or ship, and ship has grown inflection of its own: a shipper can enjoy shipping Harry/Draco, for example.

Aput - I've not heard of that usage. Can you tell me more?

Hmm, I've been ruminating over whether -ology or -doxy could be interpreted as suffixes or just words in compound. In Greek the answer is easy, logos is a word, (though in -logia, log- is the root and -ia is a suffix), and as a word it can stand on its own in a sentence. Greek, Sanskrit, and German have a way with compounding words. Latin tends not to do it very much.

Hmm, I've been ruminating over whether -ology or -doxy could be interpreted as suffixes or just words in compound.
That's the difference. jheem "ruminates" over the consideration of suffixes and words in compound; I "ruminate" over what to have for dinner.

jheem "ruminates" over the consideration of suffixes and words in compound

Less fat, more fiber.

I'm ruminating about the word doxology.

A Protestant preacher reports overhearing his ten-year-old son presiding at the funeral for a dead bird.

The boy sang, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son ... into the hole he goes."

The standard version says, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost."

Back to omnibus, World Wide Words has an interesting article on the word. Concerning bus, Michael Quinion has this to say:

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... one of our weirder linguistic inventions, since it consists just of part of a Latin suffix, –ibus, with no root word in it at all.

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There's something else a little weird about the Latin suffix -ibus that just occurred to me. There's a similar dative/ablative plural suffix in Sanskrit, -bhyas, which in the Vedas is analyzed as detachable, which is how compound words (and prefixes) are handled. This doesn't hold true for the other vibhakti / cases endings.

jheem: the ibus/bhyas ending is rather odd because it's too phonetically heavy to be a normal case ending -- and of course being unrelated to its singular. It always reminds me of the Basque proto-cases, where we can see the formation transparently.

Caterwauller: fan fiction has a wonderfully rich terminology all of its own. The richest site I found seems to have disappeared, but this Fan Fiction Glossary seems to give a decent coverage of many terms.

aput: yes, so I've heard, but couldn't it be the result of the merging of two actual cases? Like in -Vrum < *-Vzum.

CW: and don't forget the plural of fan is fen, while the plural of folk (songs) is filk. That's from science fiction fandom; from computer jargon we have, of course, vaxen and unices as the plurals of VAX and Unix (both TM) respectively.

The Fan Fiction thing is totally new to me. Thanks for the link, aput! I'm still laughing at jheem telling me not to forget . .. as if I knew in the first place. Thanks for the benefit of the doubt!