Semfatitzen

Semfatitzen is a neologism used in speculative linguistics to describe a proposed process of semantic enrichment in which a base word gains new senses through deliberate morpho-syntactic extension. The term is not established in major dictionaries and its precise definition varies among authors, appearing mostly in theoretical discussions and teaching examples.

Origin and sense: The word combines an affixal impression of semi- (partially) with a coined suffix intended to evoke “fattening” of meaning. In discussions, semfatitzen is presented as a mechanism by which speakers extend a lexical item to carry multiple gradations of sense, sometimes crossing grammatical categories to become more polysemous.

Usage and examples: In hypothetical treatments, semfatitzen accounts for the spreading of pragmatic or evaluative meaning from a core sense to related domains. Examples are illustrative rather than normative: data → data-ish to indicate approximate data quality; memory → memoryish to convey a somewhat memory-like property; cloud → cloudish to describe features that resemble a cloud. These examples show how a base term can be semantically fattened without creating a new word.

History and reception: The idea of semfatitzen has appeared primarily in classroom prompts, linguistic thought experiments, and some speculative essays. It is not a standard analysis in mainstream semantics, and its definitions depend on the author.

See also: semantic extension, polysemy, neologism, metaphor.