Tmesis is a linguistic gadget through which a phrase or phrase interrupts one other phrase or phrase. (The phrase is a Greek time period that refers to reducing.) Relying on the kind of tmesis, it’s both acceptable in formal utilization or relegated to humorous and/or emphatic colloquialisms.
Phrasing through which the preposition down is positioned throughout the verb phrase “flip down” in “Flip down that music,” versus its placement in “Flip that music down,” is an ordinary type of tmesis, as are in any way and unbeknownst, through which, respectively, so is inserted in no matter and be is positioned inside an archaic type of unknown. (Apparently, in some literary utilization, a tmetic phrase is itself cloven, as within the biblical verse “He shall be punished, what man soever offendeth.”) In contrast, seemingly tmetic phrases reminiscent of however and nonetheless don’t qualify, as a result of the framing syllables don’t represent phrases or set phrases.
A type of tmesis typically heard spoken spontaneously however finest reconstructed for writing is a possessive phrase reminiscent of “the woman within the again row’s,” referring to one thing belonging to a lady sitting in a again row; the modifying phrase “within the again row” is artificially inserted between woman and the possessive s. “The ebook is the woman within the again row’s,” for instance, ought to be recast as “The ebook belongs to the woman within the again row.”
Casual tmetic utilization is ubiquitous however discouraged in formal writing. Examples embody “an entire nother” and “any previous how” as intensifications of one other and anyhow. Lately, nevertheless, this type of tmesis has been supplanted in recognition by a kind formally generally known as expletive infixation, through which a profane or in any other case emphatic phrase is inserted into an adjective to fortify its affect, as in abso-frickin’-lutely and la-dee-frickin’-da. One other colloquial development is the emphatic insertion of so in such statements as “I’m so not going there.”
These modern conversational habits have their place in transcriptions of informal dialogue and in light-hearted casual prose, however they’re intrusive in formal writing.
