tmesis
- A rhetorical and linguistic figure in which a word or phrase is split and another word is inserted in the middle, as in 'abso-blooming-lutely.'
In a sentence
- The exclamation 'fan-bloody-tastic' is a classic example of tmesis, embedding an expletive inside another word for emphasis.
- The linguist's lecture on tmesis drew laughter when she demonstrated how naturally speakers insert words mid-compound without thinking about it.
Usage note. The initial 't' is silent in pronunciation; tmesis is primarily a technical term in linguistics and classical rhetoric, used to describe a very common spoken habit that most people perform unconsciously.
Where it comes from
English tmesis · entered English 16th c.
From Greek 'tmesis,' meaning a cutting, derived from the verb 'temnein' (to cut). The term passed into Latin grammatical writing and from there into English scholarly usage; it appears in English texts on rhetoric by at least the 16th century.