Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Separation of the parts of a compound word by one or more intervening words; for example, where I go ever instead of wherever I go.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In grammar, a figure by which a compound word is separated into two parts, and one or more words are inserted between them: as, “of whom be thou ware also” (2 Tim. iv. 15), for “of whom beware thou also.” Also called diacope.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Gram.) The separation of the parts of a compound word by the intervention of one or more words.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun prosody The insertion of one or more words between the components of a compound word.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin tmēsis, from Greek, a cutting, from temnein, to cut; see tem- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Coined 1586, from Late Latin tmēsis, from Ancient Greek τμῆσις (tmēsis, "a cutting"), from τέμνω (temnō, "I cut").

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Examples

  • This is called tmesis: "What man soever" we've put one word between the syllables of another word.

    Literal Figures of Speech 2005

  • This is called tmesis: "What man soever" we've put one word between the syllables of another word.

    Archive 2005-09-01 2005

  • Sometimes the relative pronouns compounded with _cunque_ and _libet_ are separated by the insertion of some other word or words between them, which in grammatical language is called a tmesis -- as _quod enim cunque judicium subierat, absolvebatur; quem sors dierum cunque tibi dederit, lucre appone, _ 'whatever day chance may give thee, consider it as a gain.'

    C. Sallusti Crispi De Bello Catilinario Et Jugurthino 86 BC-34? BC Sallust

  • I just put all of that stuff in the tmesis pile before you showed me that there's a whole nother category.

    Sometimes You Just Wonder Heo 2007

  • Wrath and I are old friends, and I've come to accept his tendency toward tmesis as an endearing personality quirk.

    Archive 2006-02-01 Heo 2006

  • Wrath and I are old friends, and I've come to accept his tendency toward tmesis as an endearing personality quirk.

    The Forgotten Six Heo 2006

  • Nonetheless, tmesis reminds us (if we need to be) that in such grammatical matters -- never say never.

    Archive 2004-06-01 M-mv 2004

  • In tmesis we break a work in two, usually to put another word between the parts.

    The recommended daily allowance M-mv 2004

  • In tmesis we break a work in two, usually to put another word between the parts.

    Archive 2004-06-01 M-mv 2004

  • (In English only the compounds of "ever" readily lend themselves to tmesis.)

    Archive 2004-06-01 M-mv 2004

Comments

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  • "West By God Virginia" is the one my father used to say.

    March 8, 2007

  • Separation of the parts of a compound word by one or more intervening words; for example, "where I go ever" instead of "wherever I go".

    April 7, 2007

  • How about "abso freakin' lutely?"

    See also dystmesis.

    October 3, 2007

  • When we were kids and were told to behave, we'd reply with, "But I am being hayve!" ;-)

    October 3, 2007

  • Or unfuckinbelievable.

    October 5, 2007

  • Fanfuckingtastic is my fave.

    October 5, 2007

  • Infuckingcredible!

    August 17, 2008

  • Come on. Tfuckingmesis.

    August 17, 2008

  • Does supercalifreakinawesome work?

    August 18, 2008

  • "You can always tell a cuckoo from Bridge End .... it goes cuck-BLOODY-OO, cuck-BLOODY-OO, cuck-BLOODY-OO."

    Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

    November 20, 2008

  • JM hates tme-bloody-sis.

    March 24, 2011

  • Some remedial examples, please. I'm still fuzzy on this.

    June 25, 2015

  • That's a-whole-nother story.

    June 26, 2015

  • In English, tmesis mostly happens when the inserted word is placed in the syllable right before the primary stress syllable:
    fan-TAS-tic, so fan-frickin-TAS-tic.

    But sometimes right before the morpheme boundary is a more natural place to break up the word:
    un-/be-LIEV-a-ble, so: un-frickin-/be-LIEV-a-ble OR un-/be-frickin-LIEV-a-ble.

    In English, compounds normally have a primary stress on the first word, so tmesis doesn't work out so well.
    *BASE-frickin-ball, *FIRE-damn-fighter, *PAN-da-damn-cub.

    June 26, 2015

  • Thanks, Tank.

    June 27, 2015

  • Tmesis, by the way, is part of Russian grammar when it comes to prepositional phrases with negative pronouns such as никто (nikto, "nobody"), ничто (nichto, "nothing"), and никакой (nikakoy, "no kind of"). So if you want to say, "We were not talking about anybody", that would be "Мы не говорили ни о ком" (My ne govorili ni o kom), literally (more or less), "We were not talking no-about-body" (Russian uses the double negative).

    June 27, 2015