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Making Nouns From Adjectival Phrases

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 04:42pm on 2005-01-24

Why is it that "upfuckedness" or "up-fuckedness" seems to make sense, but "off-pissedness" sounds wrong?

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There are 13 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] sjo.livejournal.com at 09:43pm on 2005-01-24
It only sounds wrong because it's not a common usage... but we can change that!
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blk: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] blk at 09:43pm on 2005-01-24
Because "fuck" is a valid infix, but "piss" isn't?
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posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 11:17pm on 2005-01-26
That's the answer I like best of the answers I've heard so far. Now to go looking for counterexamples. I don't think I'm going to find another infix modifier in English to try out, but I'm going to see if I can come up with modifiers that can't usually be infix but still work in that position in this type of construction.

I think that's probably the most interesting thing about the word "fuck" -- that it works as an infix modifier. (For anyone else coming in late and wondering what we mean, consider: "Infuckingcredible", "absofuckinglutely", etc. It's also interesting to look at which syllable breaks can take a "fuck" and wich cannot.)
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posted by [identity profile] filkerdave.livejournal.com at 10:11pm on 2005-01-24
If it's any help, the German phrase is off-gepisst.
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posted by [identity profile] en-ki.livejournal.com at 10:37pm on 2005-01-24
Off-pissédness sounds fine. Off-piss'ness does not.
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posted by [identity profile] joemorf.livejournal.com at 11:14pm on 2005-01-24
Interesting... I've only ever heard "fuckedupedness."

~j
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posted by [identity profile] suecochran.livejournal.com at 05:02am on 2005-01-25
Yeah, "fucked-upness sounds much better to my ear than "up-fuckedness". Same with "pissed-offness".
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 11:11pm on 2005-01-26
"Fucked-upness" feels awkard to me. As though there's ambiguity over where to attach the "-ed". 'Cause it's not "upness", it's "fuckedness", but "fuck-upedness" sounds even more clumsy than "fucked-upness" ... so "upfuckedness" always seemed like a way to get each part attached to the correct other part, since "up-" as a prefix works, and reversing the order of modifiers is allowed so much of the time.

Maybe it really is just a familiarity thing then. Though I'm still interested in the infix hypothesis.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 11:08pm on 2005-01-26
#blink# Huh. "Upfuckedness" always sounded natural to me. Regionalism? I wonder...
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] joemorf.livejournal.com at 02:14am on 2005-01-27
Could be, regionalism has played tricks on me in the past. (Various areas of the states, and five of my formative years in Australia.) I recall a friend performing much the same blink when I expressed exasperation with a mutual friends "fuckwittedness," which seems to me an aspect of being a fuckwit... a term my friend was unfamiliar with.

Curious: do you pronounce it - ah, wait - I see the question has been answered already :)

~j
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] hunterkirk.livejournal.com at 12:05am on 2005-01-25
Making up new words... we need more them... don't you just love english.

:)
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posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 11:06pm on 2005-01-26
Except that it doesn't feel like making up new words; it feels like "uncovering" words based on the rules of how English words are put together. Or in this case, trying to figure out exactly what those rules are that I've been following for so long without having stated them.

(It's like the first time I needed the word "heterogenous": I thought the concept, I assembled the word, I uttered the word, and the person I was talking to told me it wasn't a real word. I said I'd never heard it before, but it had to be a real word, a proper English word, whether it was in the dictionary or not, because I'd followed the rules when assembling it and its meaning was reasonably clear to any native-speaker familiar with the word "homogenous". Then I pulled out a dictionary and we discovered that it was in fact in there. Did I "invent/re-invent" a word when I did that, or merely "discover" an existing word by following the rules on the fly?)

But yeah, one of the things I love about English is its incredibly rich and nuanced vocabulary. Yaay words! Including making up new ones when we do need to make 'em up.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] uilos.livejournal.com at 12:33am on 2005-01-25
I occassionally use piss-offedness.
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