A fantastic (fantasmic?) question
An astute Phrontistery reader inquires:
I was wondering if you could help me with a word issue. I was just reading some stuff on the Internet today and came across pleonasm. Later on in the article, they used the term "pleonastic". A look up one m-w.com confirmed that this was a correctly derived form of the word "pleonasm". Seconds before reading this word, though, I wrote down (notes for my own enjoyment) the term *"pleonasmic". What is going on here that makes my word not a word? Is this a rule of English that I have neglected to learn, or is this just a quirky irregularity of this splendid/abysmal language?
The phenomenon you're observing results from the tension between Greek principles for forming adjectives and English ones. In English, -ic is productive (i.e. you can use it as a suffix on new words and are unlikely to cause any eyebrows to rise). In contrast, -astic is not productive, which is why you coined 'pleonasmic', which sounds lovely to me. However, all English words ending in -asm derive from Greek, and the vast majority of them form adjectives using '-astic', which is the anglicized version of the Greek suffix -astikos:
spasm --> spastic
iconoclasm --> iconoclastic
sarcasm --> sarcastic
enthusiasm --> enthusiastic
phantasm --> fantastic
pleonasm --> pleonastic
In fact, plastic also follows this model, although plasm is far less common than plasma, and is mostly used in the phrase germ plasm. But there is one common word where the -asm / -astic pattern does not hold true, and where -asm becomes -asmic: orgasm --> orgasmic. Partly this may be because while Greek orgasmos is attested in ancient texts, orgastikos (the expected form) is not. Partly it may be that orgasm came into English via the intermediary of French rather than one of the classical languages. And partly it may be that orgasm is used in different, uh, contexts.
There is actually an archaic form orgastic, but it has long since fallen out of use: you can see its rise and fall here, and see that in fact orgastic was more common than orgasmic in English until about 1965. Make of that what you will. However, some of those hits for orgastic may be misspelled or improperly scanned orgiastic. Surprisingly, orgy/orgiastic and orgasm/orgasmic, although both are Greek-derived, are basically unrelated to one another; orgasmos derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wrog- 'to burgeon, to swell', while orgy derives from Greek orgia, 'secret rites in honour of Bacchus', and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *werg- 'to work' and is closer to ergonomic, organ, or urge, etymologically, than it is to orgasm. Or so says the OED.
Two other -asm words that normally take an -asmic rather than an -astic adjectival form are protoplasm and ectoplasm, but these are really quite rare and both, like orgasm, have archaic -astic variants. Also, there are several -astic words like drastic and elastic that, while of Greek derivation, have no -asm nominal form either in Greek or in English (e.g. *elasm, *drasm). Finally, chasm has no common adjectival form, although a couple of centuries ago you might find chasmic or chasmatical or chasmal.
Thanks very much for your interesting question! I greatly enjoyed looking up semi-naughty words in the dictionary (who doesn't?), in the cause of research.
I was wondering if you could help me with a word issue. I was just reading some stuff on the Internet today and came across pleonasm. Later on in the article, they used the term "pleonastic". A look up one m-w.com confirmed that this was a correctly derived form of the word "pleonasm". Seconds before reading this word, though, I wrote down (notes for my own enjoyment) the term *"pleonasmic". What is going on here that makes my word not a word? Is this a rule of English that I have neglected to learn, or is this just a quirky irregularity of this splendid/abysmal language?
The phenomenon you're observing results from the tension between Greek principles for forming adjectives and English ones. In English, -ic is productive (i.e. you can use it as a suffix on new words and are unlikely to cause any eyebrows to rise). In contrast, -astic is not productive, which is why you coined 'pleonasmic', which sounds lovely to me. However, all English words ending in -asm derive from Greek, and the vast majority of them form adjectives using '-astic', which is the anglicized version of the Greek suffix -astikos:
spasm --> spastic
iconoclasm --> iconoclastic
sarcasm --> sarcastic
enthusiasm --> enthusiastic
phantasm --> fantastic
pleonasm --> pleonastic
In fact, plastic also follows this model, although plasm is far less common than plasma, and is mostly used in the phrase germ plasm. But there is one common word where the -asm / -astic pattern does not hold true, and where -asm becomes -asmic: orgasm --> orgasmic. Partly this may be because while Greek orgasmos is attested in ancient texts, orgastikos (the expected form) is not. Partly it may be that orgasm came into English via the intermediary of French rather than one of the classical languages. And partly it may be that orgasm is used in different, uh, contexts.
There is actually an archaic form orgastic, but it has long since fallen out of use: you can see its rise and fall here, and see that in fact orgastic was more common than orgasmic in English until about 1965. Make of that what you will. However, some of those hits for orgastic may be misspelled or improperly scanned orgiastic. Surprisingly, orgy/orgiastic and orgasm/orgasmic, although both are Greek-derived, are basically unrelated to one another; orgasmos derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wrog- 'to burgeon, to swell', while orgy derives from Greek orgia, 'secret rites in honour of Bacchus', and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *werg- 'to work' and is closer to ergonomic, organ, or urge, etymologically, than it is to orgasm. Or so says the OED.
Two other -asm words that normally take an -asmic rather than an -astic adjectival form are protoplasm and ectoplasm, but these are really quite rare and both, like orgasm, have archaic -astic variants. Also, there are several -astic words like drastic and elastic that, while of Greek derivation, have no -asm nominal form either in Greek or in English (e.g. *elasm, *drasm). Finally, chasm has no common adjectival form, although a couple of centuries ago you might find chasmic or chasmatical or chasmal.
Thanks very much for your interesting question! I greatly enjoyed looking up semi-naughty words in the dictionary (who doesn't?), in the cause of research.