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-ism (/-ˌ ɪ z əm /) is a suffix in many English words, originally derived from the Ancient Greek suffix -ισμός (-ismós), and reached English through the Latin-ismus, and the French-isme. [1]
The suffix is often humorously appended to other English words to create nonce words. For example, stupidology would refer to the study of stupidity; beerology would refer to the study of beer. [1] Not all scientific studies are suffixed with ology. When the root word ends with the letter "L" or a vowel, exceptions occur.
As a general rule, this vowel almost always acts as a joint-stem to connect two consonantal roots (e.g. arthr-+ -o-+ -logy = arthrology), but generally, the -o-is dropped when connecting to a vowel-stem (e.g. arthr-+ -itis = arthritis, instead of arthr-o-itis). Second, medical roots generally go together according to language, i.e., Greek ...
Ism (name), the Arabic word for a personal name-ism, a suffix appended to many philosophical concepts; Industry Structure Model, a formal model for skills and training, now superseded by SFIAPlus; International Safety Management Code, used in shipping; Kissimmee Gateway Airport (IATA airport code)
These words can be "lexicalized" (made into separate lexical entries, i.e. words with their own specific meanings) by giving them additional semantics, much as the original English gerund "meeting" and passive participle "loaded" have been lexicalized from their original meanings of "the act of meeting (something)", "being loaded into/onto ...
Most plurals of words ending in -is are -es (pronounced [iːz]), using the regular Latin plural rather than the Greek -εις: crises, analyses, bases, with only a few didactic words having English plurals in -eis: poleis, necropoleis, and acropoleis (though acropolises is by far the most common English plural).
A word-final segment that is somewhere between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme is known as a suffixoid [2] or a semi-suffix [3] (e.g., English-like or German-freundlich "friendly"). Examples [ edit ]
List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom; List of British words not widely used in the United States; List of South African English regionalisms; List of words having different meanings in American and British English: A–L; List of words having different meanings in American and British English: M–Z