Sooo, as part of my Bachelor's degree I had to take linguistics. And if you don't know, that's all about the breakdown of language. My teacher freakin' LOVED language and language studies. So she had all sorts of amusing little anecdotes and such. During lecture about affixes one day she waxed philosophical about one suffix in particular.
"-let"
As in piglet or droplet or booklet. In those words it's added to give the meaning of "small version." Or something similar. Then she mentioned there's the word pamphlet which just throws the whole thing off. Because what is a pamph???
So she declared that she is trying to coin words with "-let" as the suffix. Her favorite is the word "manlet." She was seriously proud when she described her 20 year old son as a manlet. A manlet would be the over-eighteen boy that is technically a man, but lives at home and does not do other "grown up" things like supporting himself and such. Her son hated the term, big surprise. But she loved it, and used manlet as often as possible.
I didn't particularly have a special love of that class, but I love throwing that suffix around now. I use manlet a lot, especially when describing my nephew when he's all pimped out. My other favorite is "thuglet." You know those high school kids who think they're tough with their sideways hats, baggy pants, and general air of... dare I say, retarded thuggishness? Yeah, they're thuglets. My husband also gave me a term which I will not be using here due to its potential to offend some people. Funny, I just don't want to alienate any readers of my blog.
It's easy to throw a suffix onto a word, but the word has to be usable. So I wanted to challenge you, my readers, to come up with some new words for "-let." And leave them in my comments. Can you make one that will stick?
1 comment:
Was Tim's word, perhaps, "slutlet"? Just a guess.
Some of these could get unfortunate. Micro Machines would be come "toylet". I don't think that one will catch on.
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