Pejorative suffix

Suffixes forming insults in various languages
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A pejorative suffix is a suffix that attaches a negative meaning to the word or word-stem preceding it. There is frequent overlap between this and the diminutive form.

The pejorative suffix may add the sense of "a despicable example of the preceding," as in Spanish -ejo (see below). It can also convey the sense of "a despicable human having the preceding characteristic"; for instance, as in English -el (see below) or the development of the word cuckold from Old French cocu "cuckoo" + -ald, taken into Anglo-Saxon as cokewald and thus to the modern English word.

Examples

Catalan

The Catalan language has pejorative suffixes.

Chinese

The Chinese language has pejorative suffixes.

NOTE: this suffix is from the word 婊子 biǎozi "prostitute", so at first word suffixed with 婊 were used to describe only women, but recently it can be used to describe both men and women, for example, 圣母婊 shèngmǔbiǎo, which means people who pretend to be as merciful as goddesses on the Internet, from 圣母shèngmǔ"goddess"

English

Esperanto

Hawaiian

Italian

Japanese

Latin

Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin)

Portuguese

Provençal

Russian

Spanish

References

  1. ^ "Bill Casselman's Words of the World".
  2. ^ "Online Etymology Dictionary: -ard".
  3. ^ Anishinaabemowin
  4. ^ Tore Nesset "Ideology in inflection"
  5. ^ Gogol, Nikolai (1980). Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810111592.