Italian diminutive
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A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of
intimacy An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family, friends, or ...
or
endearment Affection or fondness is a "disposition or state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. It has given rise to a number of branches of philosophy and psychology concerning emotion, disease, influence, and sta ...
. A (
abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) is a word-formation device used to express such meanings. In many languages, such forms can be translated as "little" and diminutives can also be formed as multi-word constructions such as " Tiny Tim". Diminutives are often employed as
nicknames A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
and
pet name A hypocorism ( or ; from Ancient Greek: (), from (), 'to call by pet names', sometimes also ''hypocoristic'') or pet name is a name used to show affection for a person. It may be a diminutive form of a person's name, such as ''Izzy'' for I ...
s when speaking to small children and when expressing extreme tenderness and intimacy to an adult. The opposite of the diminutive form is the augmentative. Beyond the ''diminutive form'' of a single word, a ''diminutive'' can be a multi-word name, such as "Tiny Tim" or "Little Dorrit". In many languages, formation of diminutives by adding suffixes is a productive part of the language. For example, in Spanish can be a nickname for someone who is overweight, and by adding an suffix, it becomes which is more affectionate. A (example in Polish: → → ; example in Italian: → → ) is a diminutive form with two diminutive suffixes rather than one. While many languages apply a grammatical diminutive to
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s, a few – including Slovak,
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
,
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, Polish, Bulgarian,
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...
,
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and Estonian – also use it for
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s (in Polish: → → ) and even other
parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
(Ukrainian → → — to sleep or Slovak → → — to sleep, → — to run). In English the alteration of meaning is often conveyed through
clipping Clipping may refer to: Words * Clipping (morphology), the formation of a new word by shortening it, e.g. "ad" from "advertisement" * Clipping (phonetics), shortening the articulation of a speech sound, usually a vowel * Clipping (publications) ...
, making the words shorter and more
colloquial Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the style (sociolinguistics), linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom norm ...
. Diminutives formed by adding affixes in other languages are often longer and (as colloquial) not necessarily understood. Diminutives in
isolating language An isolating language is a type of language with a morpheme per word ratio close to one, and with no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme. Examples of widely spoken isolating language ...
s may grammaticalize strategies other than suffixes or prefixes. In
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
, for example, other than the nominal prefix 小 ''xiǎo'' and nominal suffixes 儿/兒 ''-r'' and 子 ''-zi'', reduplication is a productive strategy, e.g., → and → . In formal Mandarin usage, the use of diminutives is relatively infrequent, as they tend to be considered to be rather colloquial than formal. Some
Wu Chinese The Wu languages (; Wu romanization and IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] ( Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Zhejiang Provin ...
dialects use a tonal affix for nominal diminutives; that is, diminutives are formed by changing the tone of the word. In some contexts, diminutives are also employed in a
pejorative A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...
sense to denote that someone or something is weak or childish. For example, one of the last Western Roman emperors was
Romulus Augustus Romulus Augustus ( 465 – after 511), nicknamed Augustulus, was Roman emperor of the West from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. Romulus was placed on the imperial throne by his father, the ''magister militum'' Orestes, and, at that time, ...
, but his name was diminuted to "Romulus Augustulus" to express his powerlessness.


Examples

* ''Charlie'' from Charles * ''Chuck'' from Charles * ''darling'' from dear * ''duckling'' from duck * ''cygnet'' from Old French ''cigne''; French ''cygne'' (both: swan) * ''ringlet'' from ring * ''doggie'' from dog


See also

*
Affect (linguistics) In linguistics, affect is an attitude or emotion that a speaker brings to an utterance. Affects such as sarcasm, contempt, dismissal, distaste, disgust, disbelief, exasperation, boredom, anger, joy, respect or disrespect, sympathy, pity, gratitu ...
* Augmentative *
Comparison (grammar) Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages ...
*
Diminutives in Australian English Diminutive forms of words are commonly used in everyday Australian English. While many dialects of English make use of diminutives and hypocorisms, Australian English uses them more extensively than any other.Sussex, Roland. 2004. Abstand, Ausb ...
*
Hypocorism A hypocorism ( or ; from Ancient Greek: (), from (), 'to call by pet names', sometimes also ''hypocoristic'') or pet name is a name used to show affection for a person. It may be a diminutive form of a person's name, such as ''Izzy'' for I ...
(diminutives of given names) *
List of diminutives by language The following is a list of diminutives by language. Indo-European languages Germanic languages English English has a great variety of historical diminutives adopted from other languages but many of these are lexicalized. Productive diminut ...
* -ie ending


References

{{Authority control Linguistic morphology *