OLOGIES AND ISMS
by Michael Quinion
Reviewed by lexicographer Jonathon Green, editor of the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, and author of Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made and many other works.
Like the DNA that lies at the heart of the human body, language too has its building blocks, fundamental and indivisible, the literal foundations of the vocabulary. For the linguist these are the phonemes, from the Greek phoneima, a sound, and defined by the OED as “a phonological unit of language that cannot be analyzed into smaller linear units” and by David Crystal as “the minimal unit in the sound system of a language”. But if the phonemes are the foundations, the word, the linguistic “house” as it were, offers other, more obviously visible components. These are the prefixes and suffixes, the tops and tails of a given word: hypo-, palaeo-, onco-, -saur, -gynous, -cyte. On any page, in any sentence, such portmanteau terms abound: acquaint oneself with the meaning of such appendages and one is on the way to full definition.
There are very many such affixes and such etymological dictionaries as those of Skeat or Partridge always offered a cross-section. Now, in one dedicated volume, Michael Quinion (who, as after-dinner speakers put it, “needs no introduction”) has collected what one might term the core list, each with an etymology and a range of examples. The 1,250-strong lexicon comes in dictionary order, plus sidebars that focus on such especially popular terms as cyber-, -cide, -phobia, and -algia, plus a list of determining multiples, among them yotta- (1024) and zepto (10-21). In addition are thematic lists — unsurprisingly the worlds of Medicine and Surgery, plus the attendant Body, predominate here, closely followed by those of the Chemical Elements. Among other areas, Religion and Spirit, Sensations, Shapes and Time all provide their own examples.
As might be expected the bulk of such material is based in Greek or Latin. One might accuse such classicism of deliberate jargoneering and obfuscation, but the translations make it clear that such affixes actually produce useful and, had one the classics to know them, clear definitions of the pertinent terms. Indeed, the more modern coinages, mainly suffixes such as -fest, -meister, -ista, -bot and above all -oholic and -gate (neither of which latter pair are “true” suffixes) sound slightly specious.
It is traditional when reviewing dictionaries to parade one’s supposedly superior wisdom: nits, in other words, must be picked. OK. I would have like to have seen fashionista, surely the first of the non-political -ista uses; I missed the sci-fi plural fen (as in the community of fans) under -en. I would have also liked to see mention of that least classical and most demotic of suffixes, the Australian slang -o, as in garbo, milko, sango and so many more. And ... and that’s about it. Other, that is, than the title: both terms are suffixes, surely a suitably assonant prefix could have been found.
Despite their primary use as works of reference, dictionaries (even the mighty OED) should entertain as well as inform. Ologies and Isms performs absolutely as required. It will, as the blurb writers have it, delight anyone with an interest in words. As subscribers to World Wide Words, our communal hat should be tipped to Michael Quinion. As also to the OUP: of late too often sidetracked into the second-rate, this is what the Press does best.
[Michael Quinion, Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and Endings, Oxford University Press; paperback, pp280; ISBN 0-19-280123-6; publisher’s price GBP8.99. More information, including sample entries.]
Last updated 8 Oct 2005
