Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An unstressed word, typically a function word, that is incapable of standing on its own and attaches in pronunciation to a stressed word, with which it forms a single accentual unit. Examples of clitics are the pronoun 'em in I see 'em and the definite article in French l'arme, "the arm.”
- adj. Of or relating to a clitic or clisis.
Wiktionary
Etymologies
- Greek klitikos, leaning, from klīnein, to lean; see klei- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“By the way, how is it that your research has to do with the clitoris as in "clitic"?”
“I try to avoid saying the word "clitic" because, well, I don't swear.”
“I want to google "clitic," but I'm afraid to, given the nature of today's internet....”
“I think that the possessive morpheme is technically a clitic.”
Preposterous Apostrophes III: The kings of England’s « Motivated Grammar
“Most languages can adopt theme-rheme structure idiosyncratically — as for English, we often use as for theme constructions — but topic-prominent languages use systematic changes in syntax or even dedicated morpological elements such as the Japanese clitic particle -wa to mark themes and to set them apart from rhemes.”
“My original sentence had the example--"The Queen of England's language"--where the possessive clitic 's applies to the entire noun phrase.”
“Oddly enough, I find I have absolutely no idea what the adjectival form of "clitoris" is, but I bet you it isn't "clitic".”
“We already refer to "clitic pronouns" that are not mobile but attached to the verb.”
“Japanese is developing clitic doubling like many Romance languages!”
“The most prominent ones concern the placement of clitic pronouns, and the use of subject pronouns as objects in the third person.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘clitic’.
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2042 more...
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Words that sound dirty but aren't.
When you want to be pedantic AND childish.
titular, masticate, condiment, titmouse, penal, formication, social intercourse, assassination, cacophony, lucubrate, rectify, banal and 131 more...
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Lyngwistix
semantic, semiotic, linguistic, etc.
lexeme, sonorant, prosody, monophthong, portmanteau, dithyramb, inflection, deixis, mondegreen, screed, persiflage, polysemy and 42 more...
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Greek to me
Gordian knot, Proteus, sisyphean, eudemonia, glossolalia, hemorrhage, hamadryad, aphotic, tautogeneity, anthropomorphism, polygamy, polygyny and 37 more...
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Gram-Lang
pleonastic, synecdoche, solecism, virgule, fricative, altiloquent, chrestomathy, orthography, mondegreen, polysemy, zeugma, Syllepsis and 9 more...
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Pseudo-seduction
With which to confuse innocent ladies (or gentlemen, if you prefer) who might be invited to don a coverslut and come to tour an adulterine castle. Plausible deniability through lexicographical obsc...
adulterine, coverslut, cunctatory, puissant, quincunx, coccyx, groin vault, sexpartite vault, nookshaft, putlog hole, cuirass, mensuration and 35 more...
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Wrongheads
Insults that make me laugh. Some of these are re-contextualized because they sound like insults to me.
wretched, dasdardly, sniveling, dingbat, rankle, vapid, ninny, nincompoop, dolt, imbecile, fucktard, scoundrel and 173 more...
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epeolatrist's list
epeolatry, syzygy, sphallolalia, lucubration, lugubrious, cacology, mellifluous, tmesis, synecdoche, anathema, eschatological, razbliuto and 349 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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flannagan's Words
netop, kenspeckle, loden, framboise, providence, milquetoast, schism, cadence, thrush, asphodel, clandestine, aesthete and 196 more...
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English grammar
terms relevant to English grammar
phrase, clause, sentence, complement, modifier, adjunct, specifier, constituent, syntax, bar level, supplement, coordination and 285 more...
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andrewa121's Words
moo, omphaloskepsis, pastiche, gazebo, implicature, spoon, clitic, dromiceiomimus, funicular, palimpsest, phillipic, moribund and 2 more...
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what we like to say
"... on the basis of this information, we can actually figure out how genes are organized in the genome, and we can do this simply by letting organisms do what they like to do, which is to mate...
phagocytosis, pinocytosis, invagination, cochlea, congential, aggrecans aggregate, map kinase kinase..., agglutinate, consanguineous, vasculogenesis, clitic, labile and 5 more...
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Charlie
C
carbuncle, chimaera, catamite, carphology, chancre, coprolalia, callipygian, concupiscence, coeval, codling, clitic, cojones and 39 more...
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Words that sound dirty, but aren't
Inspired by a Candid Camera sketch.
horehound, fugue, ramrod, jocular, thespian, titmouse, masticate, pussyfoot, angina, booby, formicate, hoar and 64 more...
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Almost Dirty Words
Words that seem nasty, but aren't. Don't like it? Well... you're full of cockles.
bagasse, nosegay, jaculate, titmouse, titular, niggardly, masticate, angina, philatelist, fallacious, Uranus, rectory and 69 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for clitic.
recombinantdna Well, don't ask her about her clitics Oct 5, 2009
bilby I asked the girl next door and she said she doesn't have a cat. Sep 29, 2008
johnmperry A grammatically independent and phonologically dependent word. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level. For example, the English possessive -'s is a clitic; in the phrase the girl next door’s cat, -’s is phonologically attached to the preceding word door while grammatically combined with the phrase the girl next door, the possessor. Jun 21, 2008
bilby lol sarra! Dec 3, 2007
sarra tragically, this would be the most apropos entry in my linguistics is sexy list yet Dec 3, 2007