infix

present singular third person infixes · participle present infixing · participle past infixed · past infixed

1. archaictransitiveTo set; to fasten or fix by piercing or thrusting in.

   to infix a sting, spear, or dart

   4 more examples

   […] 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.

   c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]

   The fatal Dart a ready Passage found, And deep within his Heart infix’d the Wound:

   Consider that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred on the body of each animal, or flying about infix their stings in him.

   1779, David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 10, page 100

   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.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 41, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

2. transitiveTo instill.
3. transitivehuman sciencesTo insert a morpheme inside an existing word.

plural infixes

1. human sciencesAn affix inserted inside a root, such as -ma- in English edumacation.

   1 more example

   I am not pleased with one or two of the noun cases (they are too similar to others) and I want to change the way that the Focus category (see Section 3.5 of the grammar) is manifested (using word-order instead of an infix or other phonological marker). All in all, the language is structured almost exactly as I wanted.

   2006, “Ithkuil Q & A”, in The Conlanger's Library, archived from the original on 14 Jan 2025, page 6

2. some authors when describing agglutinative languages; otherwise dated; some authors when describing agglutinative languages; otherwise datedhuman sciencesA prefix that is not at the beginning of a word, such as the con- of reconcile, or a suffix that is not at the end of a word, such as the -al of nationality.

   The morpheme in question is the reflexive prefix ('infix' in the traditional Bantu terminology).

   2023, Bostoen, de Schryver, Guérois & Pacchiarotti, editor, On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar, page 709

   3 more examples

   The infix position contains (pronominal) object markers, showing agreement with the object(s), which might be one or more noun phrases following the verb, or a foregoing or previously mentioned object marking.

   2008, Derek Nurse, Tense and Aspect in Bantu, →ISBN

   […] but the second example contravenes all the rules, as the negative infix should NEVER precede any Set 2 affix present in the complex.

   2008, George Hewitt, Are Verbs Always What They Seem to Be?

   […] at least in languages, like Swahili, which exhibit morphologically different tense/aspect infixes in affirmative and negative clauses[…]

   2018, Gloria Cocchi, chapter 5, in Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond, →DOI

3. datedBantu linguisticshuman sciencesA prefix that always occurs in the position immediately before the verb root, and which may in turn be preceded by other prefixes.
4. proscribedhuman sciencesSynonym of interfix.

   Synonyms: interfix