This inaugural entry in the postcardiness blog gives a tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report show on Comedy Central for using some grammatical creative license to append the -ness suffix to nouns. It was he who blew the dust off of the obscure word truthiness, and rejuvenated it in the lexicon of the English language, in “The Word“ segment on his very first show (October 17, 2005), four years ago last Saturday. Truthiness was named the 2005 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. In this blog, I will explore the “-ness” of postcards, and relate the discoveries and stories that ensue.
Tags: -ness suffix, postcards, Stephen Colbert, truthiness
October 31, 2009 at 12:16 PM |
Sounds like an interesting concept.
More accurately, the suffix is “-iness.”
December 31, 2009 at 10:03 PM |
Hello postcardy! So glad that you find the “-ness” of postcards of interest. I couldn’t find the suffix “-iness” in my tattered old dictionary. Perhaps it crept into a newer edition. So hard to keep up with the ever-changing English language! — Leo