What English words employ the Spanish suffix '-ista'?


The Spanish suffix '-ista' denotes someone associated with something. This has been adopted into English in one example I can think of, namely a 'fashionista'. One would have expected many more but I can't immediately think of any that are regulary used. Can anyone else help, please?



Answer



The Spanish -ista suffix has in the last few generations become a reasonably common and at least semi-productive suffix in English. It’s nothing compared to our native -ist, but we do have a surprising number of imports with -ista.


In Spanish, where there is not an -ist suffix but only -ista, the suffix is used for nouns and adjectives alike. But unlike in Spanish, in English it is almost always used for nouns, not exclusively for adjectives. The sole “only an adjective” example I could find in English is modernista. That because we have the highly productive -ist suffix in English to do the adjectival work. So you usually see -ista only in words borrowed from southern Romance languages, and even then, it is almost always a noun, not an adjective.


The OED2++ lists these 38 noun and/or adjective entries that end with -ista:



  • Aˈprista [adj.] ← Apra

  • ‖ arista [n.]

  • ‖ autopista [n.]

  • autopista [n.]

  • ‖ ballista [n.]

  • barista [n.]

  • capoeirista [n.]

  • Clintonista [n.]

  • ‖ contrabandista [n.]

  • crista [n.]

  • ‖ euporista [n. pl.] ← ‖ eupoˈriston [n.]

  • fashionista [n.]

  • ‖ genista [n.]

  • ‖ hasta la vista [n.]

  • hasta la vista [int. (and n.)]

  • ‖ lanista [n.]

  • minifundista [n.]

  • modernista [adj.]

  • opus deista [n.]

  • Paulista [n.]

  • Peronista [n. and adj.]

  • peronista [n. and adj.]

  • ‖ prima vista [n.]

  • ‖ Protista [n. pl.]

  • Protoctista [n.]

  • reconquista [n.]

  • Sandinista [n. (and adj.)]

  • Sandinista [n.]

  • Senderista [n. and adj.]

  • ‖ Sinarquista [n.]

  • Sinarquista [n.]

  • Somocista [n. and adj.]

  • ‖ torista [n.]

  • torista [n.]

  • ‖ turista [n.]

  • turista [n.]

  • vista [n.]

  • Zapatista [n. and adj.]


Where the ‖ sigil indicates a foreign term not necessarily yet fully assimilated into English.


Just to keep everything in perspective, the same source also list 2,525 noun entries ending in a bare -ist without the terminal a, and 331 such entries that are adjectives.


However, there is some overlap between those, as it is easy to turn someone with — say, a prescriptivist perspective into actually being a prescriptivist.


There’s also something peculiar about -ist words (but not borrowed -ista ones) in that they are strange attractors for other suffixes that can lead to long agglutinative chains.



  • agonist, agonistic, agonistical, agonistically

  • archaic, archaicist, archaicistic, archaicistically

  • jurist, juristic, juristical, juristically

  • linguist, linguistic, linguistical, linguistically

  • material, materialist, materialistic, materialistically


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