11 Suffixes That Gave Us New (And Often Terrible) Words

People love coining new words. And they love making good use of them—for a while anyway. Adultescence and Frankenstorm are just a couple of the creative blends that have once made it big but didn’t really stick around.

Sometimes, however, a coinage is so apt and useful that it does stick. When that happens, we sometimes get more than just one new word; we get a new kind of word ending, one that goes on to a long, productive career in word formation. Bookmobile was born in the 1920s and went on to spawn the likes of bloodmobile, Wienermobile, and pimpmobile. Workaholic is a creation of the 1940s that led to everything from chocoholic to sleepaholic to Tweetaholic. But not all of these creative endings have staying power. We don't hear much today from the bootlegger-inspired -leggers of the 1940s—the foodleggers, gasleggers, tireleggers, and meatleggers who were circumventing the law to deal in valuable rationed goods.

Here are 11 other word endings that have become productive to varying degrees. You can probably think of a lot more to add to this list. Will they stand the test of time?

-nomics
-athon
-gate
-splaining
-cation
-tainment
-itude
-tastic
-licious
-pocalypse
-gasm

-nomics

With its origins in the staid and straightforward Nixonomics, this one has rather promiscuously attached itself to almost everything: There are words like burgernomics, beeronomics, sexonomics, and on and on.

-athon

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this one was taken from marathon back in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and it has proved its staying power since. Whether for a good cause or for no cause at all, our telethons, danceathons, bakeathons, drinkathons, complainathons, and assorted other verbathons have made this past century something of an athonathon.

-gate

This mark of scandal became productive almost immediately after the break-in at the Watergate office complex was uncovered in the early ’70s. Anywhere there’s a lie, an impropriety, or a cover-up, -gate will find a foothold. It has even spread to other languages: see toallagate (“towelgate”), a term coined after the Mexican government was revealed to have purchased $400 towels for the presidential residences. (There's even a whole Wikipedia page devoted to -gate scandals.)

-splaining

Mansplaining, nerdsplaining, vegansplaining, catsplaining—seems like everybody’s got some ’splaining to do these days.

-cation

It started with staycation in the 1940s. Soon -cation no longer cared to preserve the rhyme with vacation, and it roamed free among our leisure pursuits: foodcation, golfcation, shopcation, sleepcation. It can also refer to a break from work. Did you enjoy a recent stormcation? Are you hoping for a few days of snowcation this winter? Or will that make you long for a kidcation?

-tainment

This suffix has given us edutainment, watertainment, agritainment, newstainment—why be boring when you can wordertain?

-itude

You better check your momitude, geekitude, dudeitude, snarkitude, drunkitude, or New Yorkitude. And if it works for you, wear it with prideitude!

-tastic

It’s cheesetastic! It’s craft-tastic! It’s awesometastic! Almost anything can be made fantastic with this ending. It can even bring out the unrecognized positive qualities of that which is grosstastic, sadtastic, or craptastic. Beware the -tastic meaning drift, however. Craptastic wavers between “so crappy it’s great” and just “super crappy.”

-licious

Babelicious, bootylicious, funalicious, partylicious, biblicious, yogalicious, mathalicious—if you like it, celebrate it with a -licious!

-pocalypse

Snowpocalypse! Heatpocalypse! Will the world end in firepocalypse or icepocalypse? This suffix seems to have begun in the domain of weather reports, but hysterical exaggeration has proved useful elsewhere. Did you not hear of the e-reader’s bringing of the bookpocalypse? See also: wordmageddon.

-gasm

This new word ending offers the ultimate in excitement, bringing us words like eargasm, joygasm, sportsgasm, teagasm, soupgasm, stylegasm, and yes, ectoplasmgasm.

Discover More Stories About Words:

A version of this story ran in 2012; it has been updated for 2025.