Postfixed

Postfixed is an adjective used in linguistics and related fields to describe morphemes or elements that occur after the base form, i.e., attached to the right of the stem. These elements are typically called suffixes or postposed morphemes. The term contrasts with prefixation, where affixes attach before the base. In some descriptions, postfixed elements can also refer to clitics or particles that follow a word or phrase rather than being integrated as separate words.

In morphology, postfixed morphemes signal grammatical categories such as tense, number, case, mood, or aspect. English provides common examples through suffixes like -ed (past tense), -s (plural), and -ness (forming nouns). In other languages, suffixation can be extensive, with sequences of postfixed markers encoding complex information about agreement, derivation, and syntactic relationships.

In addition to word formation, the term postfixed can appear in discussions of clitic placement, where clitics are attached after the host word or phrase rather than preceding it, and in description of certain postposed particles in various languages.

In computer science, the related concept of postfix notation (reverse Polish notation) places operators after their operands; while the notion of a postfixed operator is sometimes used informally, postfix is the standard term in this domain.

The word postfixed derives from Latin post- meaning “after” and fixus meaning “fixed.” The term is primarily used in descriptive linguistics rather than everyday language.