How an ‘Italian’ Suffix Became Productive in Germanic Languages

In modern West-Germanic and Scandinavian languages one comes across words such as German Nudo(‘nudist’), Swedish fyllo (‘alcoholic’) and Dutch lullo (‘asshole’). All these words are recently coined under the influence of American English words such as psycho, from psychopath, lesbo, from lesbian, and kiddo from kid. This chapter describes how this new pattern of shortened and monosyllabic -o words has spread across the word and how it was able to compete with other shortened, ‘clipped’ words such as English sex from sexualactivity, plane from aeroplane, flu from influenza and clipped and monosyllabic forms with a suffix -y/-ie, so called hypocoristics, such as telly from televisionset, Andy from Andrew and hottie from hot. It also explains how this new Italian-style American English suffix managed to put aside its own Swedish, German and Dutch patterns and how this new -opattern was borrowed and became productive via a process of reinterpretation in these languages.