In an early post I noted the existence of libfix-like elements where the newly liberated affix mirrors existing—though possibly semantically opaque—morphological boundaries. The example I gave was that of -giving, as in Spanksgiving and Friendsgiving. Clearly, this comes from Thanksgiving, which is etymologically (if not also synchronically) a compound of the plural noun Thanks and the gerund/progressive giving. It seems some morphological innovation has occurred because this gives rise to new coinages and the semantics of -giving is more circumscribed than the free stem giving: it necessarily refers to a harvest-time holiday, not merely to “giving”.

At the time I speculated that it was no accident that the morphological boundaries of the new libfix mimic those of the compound. Other examples I have since collected include –mare (< nightmare; e.g., writemare, editmare); –core (< hardcore; e.g., nerdcore, speedcore) and –step (< two-step; e.g., breakstep, dubstep), both of which refer to musical genres (Zimmer & Carson 2012); –gate (< Watergate; e.g., Climategate, Nipplegate, Troopergate) and –stock (< Woodstock; e.g., Madstock, Calstock), extracted from familiar toponyms, and –position (< exposition; e.g., sexposition, craposition), for which the most likely source can be analyzed as a Latinate “level 1” prefix attached to a bound stem. So, what do we think? Are these libfixes too? Does it matter that recutting mirrors the etymological—or even synchronic—segmentation of the source word?

References

B. Zimmer and C. E. Carson. 2012. Among the new words. American Speech 87(3): 350-368.