fractomorpheme

English

Examples (linguistics)
-holic (from alcoholic) -gate (from Watergate) -ussy (from pussy)

Etymology

Borrowed from French fractomorphème, itself coined by French linguist Jean Tournier. By surface analysis, fracto- +‎ morpheme.

Noun

fractomorpheme (plural fractomorphemes)

1. (linguistics) A productive morpheme (one which readily forms new words) which originates as a shortened form of another word.
   • 2018, Michael Dow, “A corpus study of phonological factors in novel English blends”, in Proceedings of the 2018 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association‎^[1], Ottawa: Canadian Linguistic Association, archived from the original on 2024-01-17, page 13:

     In sum, "pussy blends" are more likely to fall into the category of secreted affixation, in which case -ussy would have become, however ephemerally, a fractomorpheme (cf. Watergate > -gate).