Page:The Suffix -μα in Aristophanes.djvu/2



A familiar source of laughter in comedy and elsewhere in the lighter forms of literature and conversation is the substitution of an unexpected ending for the usual ending of a word. This shift of termination for the comic effect is well-known to readers of Aristophanes. Two previous investigations were devoted to the study of those diminutives, character names, and patronymics, and those adjectives in in Aristophanes in which the comic element lies in the ending; the present article deals with a small group of nouns in, in so far as the suffix contributes anything comic to these words.

The suffix, (Lat. -men-, -men-to-, Eng. -ment) added to verbal stems makes nomina actionis which denote in most cases the result of the action of the verb. These derivative nouns occur in great abundance in tragedy, they are found to the number of one hundred in Herodotus, and are used with uncommon frequency by Hippocrates. For this reason they are generally thought to be of Ionic origin, though Fraenkel finds their source in old Attic. They became extremely common in the later language, the Koine. It is, however, in tragedy that they are most familiar to the student of classical Greek. Here they are extensively used, and often take the place of Common words, e. g. for,  for ,  for ,  for ,  for. Some of the reasons for their popularity with the tragic poets are their