infix
Pronunciation
  • (America) IPA: /ˈɪnfɪks/
  • (America) IPA: /ɪnˈfɪks/
Verb

infix (infixes, present participle infixing; past and past participle infixed)

  1. (transitive, archaic) To set; to fasten or fix by piercing or thrusting in.
    to infix a sting, spear, or dart
    • circa 1596 William Shakespeare, King John (play), Act II, Scene 1,
      […] in her eye I find
      A wonder, or a wondrous miracle,
      The shadow of myself form’d in her eye:
      Which being but the shadow of your son,
      Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow:
      I do protest I never loved myself
      Till now infixed I beheld myself
      Drawn in the flattering table of her eye.
    • 1700, John Dryden, Palamon and Arcite: or, The Knight’s Tale, from Chaucer, Book 1, in Fables, Ancient and Modern, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 11,
      The fatal Dart a ready Passage found,
      And deep within his Heart infix’d the Wound:
    • 1779, David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 10, p. 100,
      Consider that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred on the body of each animal, or flying about infix their stings in him.
    • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 41,
      Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.
  2. (transitive) To instill.
  3. (transitive, linguistics) To insert a morpheme inside an existing word.
Noun

infix (plural infixes)

  1. (linguistics) A morpheme inserted inside an existing word, such as -bloody- in English.
  2. (linguistics, proscribed) A morpheme that always appears between other morphemes in a word, such as -i- and -o- in English.
Translations Related terms


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