Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Fear-atude

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Posted by PopStar at 7:01 PM

7 comments:

Chaka said...

I think it should be "fearitude". I'm not sure what that suffix has been analogized from.

attitude
latitude
longitude
pulchritude

Hmm, it was clearly a productive suffix in a Romance language (either Latin or French). I'll check OED for the origin of these words.

12:16 PM
Chaka said...

According to OED, the -tude suffix comes either directly from Latin (altitude, latitude, longitude) or through French (attitude, aptitude, fortitude).

It also notes that it is sometimes used to form new words in English or French on analogy "occasionally irregularly, as dispiritude, torpitude."

I guess we can add "fearitude" to that list.

12:23 PM
Chaka said...

And how could I forget this one--Lileks uses it all the time: "Again, sorry for the brevity and sucktitude; it’s just one of those weeks." [from today's Bleat]

12:27 PM
PopStar said...

what about 'Pirattitude' ?

9:32 PM
Chaka said...

Pirattitude...at first I thought it should be piratitude, then I realized it was a blend of pirate and attitude. The accent doesn't quite work--it should be on "pi" for pirate and "at" for attitude, so wherever you put it, you'll end up disappointing someone.

Linus, correct me if I'm wrong--is this a blend, meaning "attitude typical of pirates," or is it a coinage of pirate plus the -tude suffix, meaning "pirate-ness"?

5:58 PM
PopStar said...

um - i think you've confused me with someone who actually knows what they're doing with words.

10:20 PM
Pirate Jimmy said...

As the expert on pirate matters, I'll have to say it's Piratitude, commonly pronounced "Pie-rit-eh-tude" but also often pronounced as "pie-...-...-...-...-yar!" by pirates.

5:23 PM

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