Hard, soft, and albacore

I'm old enough to have watched "-gate" acquire its connotation of 'scandal' or 'controversy'. Now I'm seeing another suffix getting the same treatment and wondering when this usage became mainstream enough to define niches (if that makes sense).

As the title teases, I'm thinking of "-core". I think the obvious prototype is hardcore, which spawned softcore. That's been discussed here before.

But whence nerdcore, glamcore, mumblecore and other variants, usually defining an aesthetic or a music genre?

I'm interested in how these things take root and how they spread.

These novel suffixes can be categorized as 'splinters', something similar to a combining form or a blend, but now viewed as a separate category by some linguists. The below from Transitional Morphology by Elisa Mattiello, ch 7 Splinters or Combining Forms 'in the Making'.

CFs in the making are in the process of developing from blend parts (cf. Adams 1973; Bertinetto 2001; López Rúa 2004; Gries 2012) to word portions which recurrently attach to new bases (cf. Bauer 2006; Bauer et al. 2013; Beliaeva 2019). This development process involves a transition (i.e. a diachronic evolution) from a word part used in blends, generally shortened from one of the source words, to an actual independent morpheme. The term used for this independent morpheme is 'splinter' (Lehrer 1998: 4, 2007; 12I). Bauer (2006: 77) specifically defines a splinter as 'a part of a word that, due to some reanalysis of the structure of the original word, is interpreted as meaningful, and is then subsequently used in the creation of new words. By contrast, Amiot and Dugas (2021) use 'splinter' for all modern CFs, including both truncated and secreted forms. They even claim that 'modern CFs are also used as constituents of blends' (Amiot & Dugas 202I: S 3.3.2). However, as suggested by Hamans (2010: 459), we should distinguish between blends tout court, which are not part of a productive pattern, and a special kind of compounding in which the first one or more items of the paradigm are a result of blending and function as a model for normal productive word formation after reanalysis. Hence, I prefer maintaining the terms 'splinter' and 'CF' distinct, as I believe that only when a blend splinter is used recurrently in a series of novel words and becomes productive can it be considered a CF.

But there are many different kinds

due to their transitional nature, splinters are considered a heterogeneous set and differently labelled or treated in the pertinent literature. Moreover, in lexicographic works like the OED, the formations involving splinters are commonly attributed to different processes, namely:

• Compounding: e.g. the word vegeculture [1837] 'the cultivation of vegetables' in OED3 is said to be formed by compounding, from vege- (in vegetable) + the CF -culture.

• Derivation: e.g. the above-mentioned word fruitarian is obtained, according to OED2, from fruit + the -arian suffix, with an evident similarity with vegetarian.

• Clipping: e.g. fem occurring in fem lit or fem crit is said to be shortened from the adjective feminist, originally as a graphic abbreviation, and later in various formations such as fem lib [1970] (from feminine liberation).

• Blending: e.g. the word staycation [1944] 'a holiday spent at home or in one's country of residence' is described in the same dictionary as a blend of stay and (va)cation. Yet, Bauer et al. (2019) and Believa (2019) have amply demonstrated that -cation (from vacation) productively occurs in other formations, such as workcation and spa-cation, which could be compared to neoclassical compounds or, to some extent, affixations (Beliaeva 2019: 2).

• Analogy: e.g. the word trikini [1967] 'any of various designs of ladies' swimsuit which consist of three main areas of fabric' is analysed in the OED as coming from the CF tri-, after bikini. In other words, the model word Bikini, the name of an atoll in the Marshall Islands where an atomic bomb test was carried out in July 1946, ' has been reanalysed as containing the CF bi- 'two', and has triggered other similar formations (i.e. monokini, trikini, etc.), by analogy.

The ones that have a more general meaning are more likely to stick around

Some of them are merely abbreviations of longer words happening to occur repeatedly in several lexical items, as in initial adver- and docu-, and final -cation and -zine, respectively corresponding to advertisement, documentary, vacation, and magazine. Others instead acquire a more specific or general meaning, e.g. -(t)arian ‘someone whose diet is restricted to —’, -ercise ‘physical (or non- physical but) generally strenuous activity’, -kini ‘a type of swimsuit or other beach garment’, or -lish ‘a variety of English incorporating some vocabulary or constructions of another language’. The latter are the most probable candidates for becoming established secreted CFs, because they have already undergone a process of abstraction that the former abbreviated forms have not (or not yet). It is not surprising that, as observed by Warren (1990), splinters which are reinterpreted (or secreted) tend to be final elements.

Accordingly a suffix like -core that has acquired a more general meaning (Cambridge: used in newspapers, magazines, and on social media to form words describing a particular type of style in clothes, music, furniture, etc.) is more likely to become a widespread and productive combining form.