Wednesday, April 11, 2012

some other body

He's baaaaaaaack. George W. Bush reappeared yesterday to wish for distance from the tax cuts associated with his name:
“I wish they weren’t called the Bush tax cuts,” the former president said as he kicked off the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City. “If they’re called some other body’s tax cuts, they’re probably less likely to be raised.”
Yup, it looks like other infixed in somebody. Other is famously connected to another bit of infix-y-ish-ness, namely a whole nother. It's gotta be an infix here — insertion of material into the middle of a word, like 'Homeric' (= Simpson, not Greek poet) edu-ma-cation or saxa-ma-phone, or 'expletive' out-fuckin-rageous infixation.

The form is hardly new, though it's "completely ungrammatical" for the one native speaker I've asked. Chuck Berry's lyrics for "It wasn't me" include this:
It wasn't me, baby, no it wasn't me, baby.
It must have been some other body, uh uh, baby, it wasn't me 
Of course Chuck Berry played with language for a living.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK, couldn't help but post this meme after reading this post...

Infixes