On Early and Late Modern EnglishNon-native Suffix -oon

Abstract

This paper is about identifying a nuance of social meaning which, I demonstrate, was conveyed in the Early and Late Modern period by the suffix -oon. The history of non-native suffix -oonis presented by means of assembling non-native suffix -oonvocabulary in date order and sorting according to etymology.It turns out that standard non-native -oonwords (which are few) tended to stabilise early and be of Romance etymology.A periodof enregisterment,c.1750–1850,is identified by means of scrutiny of non-native -oonusagein sixty novels,leading to the conclusion that four or more non-native -oons in a literary work signalled vulgarity.A link is made between the one-quarter non-European -oons brought to English via colonial trade, and the use of such -oons by non-noble merchants, traders and their customers splashing outon luxury foreign commodities.Thus, it is found that a suffix borrowed from Romance languages in the Middle English period received fresh input duringthe Early Modern period via non-European borrowings, resulting in sociolinguistic enregistermentin the Late Modern period.