suffixes - How are diminutives formed in recent English words?


A large variety of suffixes were used to form diminutives in English. The Wikipedia page on diminutives shows these:


* -k/-ock/-uck: balk, bollock, bullock, buttock, fetlock, folk, hark, hillock, jerk, mark, mattock (OE mattuc), milk, mullock, pillock, smirk, snack, spark, stalk, talk, whelk, work, yolk
* -n/-en/-on (accusative or feminine): burden, chicken, even, heaven (OE heofon), kitten, maiden, morn, oven, steven, vixen, weapon (OE wæpen)
* -le (defrequentative -l): beetle, boodle, chortle, doodle (shares root with dude, P doudo, dolt, dull, dote, dotterel), fizzle, giggle, kibble, little, mickle, noodle, oodle, puddle, riddle, sparkle
* -ish (disparative): boyish, fiftyish, girlish, largish, mannish, noonish, reddish, smallish, tallish, twelveish, womanish
* -s (degenitive): Becks, Betts, Wills
* -sie/-sies/-sy (babytalk assimilative or from patrici- of Patsy): bitsy, footsie (1930), halfsies, onesies, popsy (1860), teensy-weensy, tootsie (1854), twosies, Betsy, Patsy, Robsy
* -o (American devocative, later Commonwealth): bucko, daddio, garbo, kiddo, smoko, wacko, Jacko, Ricko,
* -er/-ers/-ster (agentive, intensive, hýpocoristic, also elided hrotic -a): bonkers (1948), preggers (1940), starkers (1905), Becker[s], Lizzers, Hankster, Patster
* -a (Geordie assimilative -er): Gazza, Macca
* -z (geordie degenitive -s): Bez, Chaz, Gaz

That same page also contains a list of suffixes of diminutive loanwords, such as:


* -ling (Norse defrequentative-patrinominative): darling, duckling, fingerling, gosling, underling

The suffix -ling, for example, was used to form the following words:



Most of the words shown above are old words that have been used for centuries. Are there any more recent English words (let's say, from the past few decades) that have been formed with diminutive suffixes? If yes, which words and suffixes are those?



Answer



Edit: it is important to distinguish between two senses of "diminutive": it can be neutral, as a smaller version of something; or it can be mocking, affectionate, etc; in many cases, a suffix is diminutive in both senses, because the latter often follows the former. I am mostly talking about the neutral sense here, which might not be what the original poster intended.




I'd say there are no truly productive (capable of producing new instances) diminutive suffixes in modern English. As Mitch mentioned, -y/-ey/-ie is the suffix that comes closest, but that is still not quite close when compared with suffixes in other Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch. For one thing, this English suffix is never quite neutral, it is always a bit childish or mocking, etc.. And it can only be used with selective nouns, not just any noun.


Dutch: televisie (regular), televisietje (dimin.) or router, routertje is perfectly acceptable, i.e. it is even used with new words of foreign origin. I believe the same applies to German Fernseher, Fernseherchen, etc..


It should be noted, however, that the diminutive is in many languages inherently a little bit informal, because a smaller version of a normal thing is inherently less "impressive" than the normal thing, unless the smaller version is an old word that has gained some sense of "normalcy", or some distinguishing qualities, through time.


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