Adrian thought it worth while to try out his new slang. ‘I say, you fellows, here's a rum go. Old Biffo was jolly odd this morning. He gave me a lot of pi-jaw about slacking and then invited me to tea. No rotting! He did really.’
-o generally does not change the meaning of the word or name but only makes it more colloquial, as withcheapo andJacko. It is often appended toclipped orelided forms of longer words, as withambo andparmo. Occasionally, the terminal consonant of the clipped form is doubled for clarity of meaning or pronunciation, as withuggo anddoggo. It sometimes does change the meaning of words, usually by being applied to adjectives to indicate a person with a pronounced trait, as withweirdo(“weird person”), or to nouns usedmetonymously to indicate a person with a pronounced connection to the other object, as withwino(“poor or vagrant alcoholic”). Especially in American English, some uses of this suffix are understood as dated slang, as withbucko andneato. The suffix is most frequently and widely encountered in Australian English, which has additional uses (such asrego forregistration andnasho fornational service) that are never or only extremely rarely encountered in other dialects.
Its meaning is very similar to some uses of-y and its use is particularly common where use of-y might cause misunderstanding, as withrandy andrando,journey andjourno,whiny andwino.
From manySpanish orItalian words that end ino. This ending in such Spanish or Italian words generally derives from-um, the accusative singular inflectional ending for masculine and neuter nouns in Latin.
Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015)L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)[1], Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis)
From the masculine singular of the Romance languages, such as Italian (amico); perhaps also the neuter singular common to all Slavic languages (окно(okno))
Perhaps from the above (Italianquello, Russianто(to))
Possibly derived from Greek second declension syllabic nucleus -o, from which plural -oj in greek is likely also derived.
fromProto-Finnic*-oi (variant/diminutive), fromProto-Uralic*-j (diminutive ending); the-o- is a re-extraction from the suffix being applied to stems ending in-a which was labialized by-j.
Used deverbally especially with those verbs whose dictionary form (first infinitive) ends with-aa or-ää. Somewhat unusually, the front-vowel form-ö is used only with stems that contain what is considered a front vowel under harmony, i.e.-ä-,-ö- or-y-; if it only contains neutral vowels (e,i), the back-vocalic form-o is used, even though such words or stems have front vowel harmony by default.
Analogically extended from various clippings with etymologicalo, such asvélo,resto <vélocipède,restaurant. Its pronunciation perhaps had input from-aud.
1) obsolete *) theaccusative corresponds with either thegenitive (sg) ornominative (pl) **) thecomitative is formed by adding the suffix-ka? or-kä? to thegenitive.
1) obsolete *) theaccusative corresponds with either thegenitive (sg) ornominative (pl) **) thecomitative is formed by adding the suffix-ka? or-kä? to thegenitive.
FromProto-Indo-European*-h₃onh₂- (with nominativeō made common to all cases). Etymologically, it forms part of the abstract noun suffixes-iōf,-tiōf,-āgōf,-īgōf,-ūgōf,-tūdōf,-ēdōf, but synchronically, these have become differentiated in Latin: abstract nouns in-ō are regularly feminine (and those that end in a consonant +-ō show-in- rather than-ōn- in oblique cases), whereas non-abstract nouns in-ō,-ōnis are typically masculine.
Etymologically, this denominative suffix was not used to form all first-conjugation verbs. It can be distinguished in origin from the following types that happened to fall together with it phonetically:
In one exceptional case, by sound laws acting on*-h₂ + stative suffix*-éh₁-ye-ti, whence*-h₂-éh₁-ye-ti. This case is the verbstō:*sth₂-éh₁-ye-ti >*staēō >stō).
1At least one use of the Old Latin "sigmatic future" and "sigmatic aorist" tenses is attested, which are used byOld Latin writers; most notablyPlautus andTerence. The sigmatic future is generally ascribed a future or future perfect meaning, while the sigmatic aorist expresses a possible desire ("might want to"). It is also attested as having a rare sigmatic future passive indicative form ("will have been"), which is not attested in the plural for any verb. 2The present passive infinitive in-ier is a rare poetic form which is attested. 3At least one rare poetic syncopated perfect form is attested.
Some third-conjugation verbs show a shift to the first declension in composition, such aspellō, pellere vs.-pellō, -pellāre (incompellō, compellāre andinterpellō, interpellāre) orsternō, sternere vs.cōnsternō, cōnsternāre. Schrijver (1991) derives the simplex third-conjugation versions from nasal presents in*-n-H-ti of the type*tl-n-h₂-ti >*tl̥năti >tollit (arguing that Proto-Indo-European present forms in*-né-H-ti, showing the full grade of the suffix, were replaced by paradigmatic leveling) and proposes that the compounds were derived by addition of the thematic suffix*-ye-/-yo- to*-nă-, forming*-năye-/-năyo-. In this case, the Proto-Italic form would be*-aō. Traditionally, these compound verbs in-āre were explained as "intensive" forms alongside cases likeoccupō, occupāre, but Schrijver argues that the latter are clearly denominative while the former are clearly not.[1]
^Schrijver, Peter C. H. (1991)The reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Latin (Leiden studies in Indo-European; 2), Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi,→ISBN, page411
1At least one use of the Old Latin "sigmatic future" and "sigmatic aorist" tenses is attested, which are used byOld Latin writers; most notablyPlautus andTerence. The sigmatic future is generally ascribed a future or future perfect meaning, while the sigmatic aorist expresses a possible desire ("might want to"). It is also attested as having a rare sigmatic future passive indicative form ("will have been"), which is not attested in the plural for any verb.
In Middle High German, the suffix is replaced by-er (whence German-er), as in Middle High Germangëber instead of Old High Germangëbo.Only a few German words still have a final-e that results from Old High German-o.
Inherited fromProto-Slavic*-o(“neuter suffix”). In Proto-Slavic, indefinite neuter adjectives were used as adverbs, but because Polish neuter adjectives descend from the definite neuter, the indefinite neuter suffix was fossilized as the adverbial suffix. CompareOld Polish-e.
Thilo C. Schadeberg (1989) “The three relative constructions in Swahili (Kisanifu)”, inEditions Recherche sur les Civilisations[3], pages33–40: “The concordless morpheme -o- frequently replaces the [relative concord] in old/northern/poetic Swahili[.]”
(colloquial)Combines with an (often clipped) word to create a noun referring to a person with a related property. Gives a familiar and to some extentdiminutive nuance.
This suffix is mostly used for verbs where the stem ends in the consonanti (though for some such verbs, such ascynnig, the verbnoun is given by dropping thei from the stem) or the vowel in the last syllable isi,u,eu, orwy.[1]
