the separation of a word or phrase into two parts, with another word being said between it, used mainly in informal speech for emphasis, for example ’any old how’, in which the word ’old’ comes in the middle of the word ’anyhow’
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Americanism
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The term tmesis is based on the same word in Greek, meaning ‘cutting’, and developed from the Greek verb temnein, ‘to cut’. An often quoted original example of tmesis is the splitting of the word however in Shakespeare’s Richard II:
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tmesis
noun countable linguistics
US /t(ə)ˈmisɪs/
DEFINITIONS1
1
the separation of a word or phrase into two parts, with another word being said between it, used mainly in informal speech for emphasis, for example ’any old how’, in which the word ’old’ comes in the middle of the word ’anyhow’
Synonyms and related words
Types of word or phrase
acrostic
adjacency pair
Americanism
Featured as a BuzzWord!
The term tmesis is based on the same word in Greek, meaning ‘cutting’, and developed from the Greek verb temnein, ‘to cut’. An often quoted original example of tmesis is the splitting of the word however in Shakespeare’s Richard II: