{"id":384,"date":"2007-05-15T17:47:13","date_gmt":"2007-05-15T16:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/15\/hypocorism\/"},"modified":"2007-05-15T17:47:13","modified_gmt":"2007-05-15T16:47:13","slug":"hypocorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day &#8211; Hypocorism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <strong>hypocorism<\/strong> is a pet name or diminutive. For example, Bob, Rob, Bobby, Robbie (from Robert). I came across this word for the first time the other day and had to look it up because I didn&#8217;t know what it meant.<\/p>\n<p>Hypocorisms or diminutives seem to be more widely used in some languages than in others. The Slavic languages use them a lot, and not just for people&#8217;s names &#8211; just about any noun has a hypocoristic form. At least that&#8217;s what my Czech, Slovak, Polish and Russian-speaking friends tell me.<\/p>\n<p>Hypocoristic affixes in English include<\/p>\n<p><strong>-ey\/y\/ie<\/strong>, as in doggie (dog), horsey (horse), barbie (barbeque), postie (postman\/woman), tinnie (tin [of beer]), cozzie (swimming costume), mozzie (mosquito), footie\/footy (football). This affix is particularly popular in Australia and Scotland.<\/p>\n<p><strong>-ling<\/strong>, as in duckling, gosling<\/p>\n<p><strong>-ette<\/strong>, as in kitchenette, cigarette, towellette<\/p>\n<p><strong>-let<\/strong>, as in piglet<\/p>\n<p>Can you think of any others?<\/p>\n<p>There are more examples of hypocorisms\/diminutives in a variety of languages <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Diminutive\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A hypocorism is a pet name or diminutive. For example, Bob, Rob, Bobby, Robbie (from Robert). I came across this word for the first time the other day and had to look it up because I didn&#8217;t know what it meant. Hypocorisms or diminutives seem to be more widely used in some languages than in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}