Take a tornado. Add some sharks. You’ve got a sharknado.

But it’s not just sharks that can leap out of their normal context. It looks like –nado is jumping free and becoming a combining form — a part of a word that is becoming its own productive morpheme, as in firenado.

What others are there? We’ll find out on this episode of Talk the Talk.


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Promo

TtT promo 2019-07-16 with Tom Reynolds: Combining Forms

Daniel tells Tom about some combining forms like –nado — and Tom busts out a few that Daniel hadn’t thought of.

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Show notes

The Facebook thread
https://www.facebook.com/talkthetalkpodcast/photos/a.526015844091879/2889159761110797/?type=3&theater

The plot of “Sharknado” is a little implausible, but the popularity of “nado” is a fact | Michigan Radio
https://www.michiganradio.org/post/plot-sharknado-little-implausible-popularity-nado-fact

Combining Form | Definition of Combining Form by Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/combining%20form

§ 5.9 Combining forms
https://studfiles.net/preview/3846076/page:28/

Very useful link: lotsofwords.com
Just change the URL to insert your ending of choice.
Words ending with NOMICS
https://lotsofwords.com/*nomics

Giant avocados five times the size of a standard variety set to smash the market – ABC Rural – ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-07-11/giant-avocados-hit-the-markets/9971220

Mansplaining the word of the year – and why it matters
https://theconversation.com/mansplaining-the-word-of-the-year-and-why-it-matters-37091

A Field Guide to Straightsplaining
https://gawker.com/a-field-guide-to-straightsplaining-1516723100

I’m Over the Blacksplaining Going on in Film and Television – VICE
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pawxzm/im-over-the-blacksplaining-going-on-in-film-and-television

Harvard scientists predict the future of the past tense
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/10/harvard-scientists-predict-the-future-of-the-past-tense/

Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2460562/

Culturomics
http://www.culturomics.org

Genius: Fuck wit Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’)
https://genius.com/50369


Transcript

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