transfix

== English == === Etymology 1 === From Middle French transfixer, from Old French transfixer, from Latin transfigō (“to pierce through”), from trans- (“through”) + figō (“to pierce”). ==== Pronunciation ==== ==== Verb ==== transfix (third-person singular simple present transfixes, present participle transfixing, simple past and past participle transfixed) (transitive) To render motionless, by arousing terror, amazement or awe. (transitive) To pierce with a sharp pointed weapon. (transitive) To fix or impale. ===== Related terms ===== transfixation transfixion transfixture ===== Translations ===== === Etymology 2 === From trans- +‎ -fix. ==== Noun ==== transfix (plural transfixes) (linguistics) A discontinuous affix, typical of Afro-Asiatic languages, which occurs at more than one position in a word, i.e. a combination of prefixes, infixes and/or suffixes. ===== Usage notes ===== While the above example is unambiguous, it is often debatable whether a given combination of affixes constitutes a transfix or not (in the same way that this is the case with circumfixes). For example, the verb form يَكْتُبُون (yaktubūn, “they write”) may be interpreted as containing the transfix يَــ ــُـ ــُون (ya––u–ūn), but it is also possible to see يَـ (ya-), ــُـ (-u-) and ــُون (-ūn) as individual affixes because they occur isolated of each other in the paradigm. The terms pattern and measure are also used with the roughly the same sense in Semitic studies. However, these are usually cited based on an exemplary root (e.g. one will say “the mafʕūl pattern”), so they do not strictly contain the transfix only. ===== Translations =====