Tmesis
The insertion of a word into the middle of another word, usually for emphasis.
Tmesis (Greek, 'a cutting') is the figure in which a word — usually a compound — is split, and a second word is inserted inside it. Classical tmesis: 'howsoever' as 'how soever'. Modern colloquial tmesis: 'un-bloody-believable', 'fan-flippin'-tastic', 'a whole nother story'. The inserted word intensifies or comments on the word it interrupts.
The figure is unusual in that it violates the ordinary integrity of a word. In most languages, words are treated as inviolable units; tmesis is one of the few figures that operates below the level of the word. In English it has migrated almost entirely into the informal register, where it survives as a fossilised bit of expressive slang.
In older English poetry and prose, tmesis was more respectable. Milton and Shakespeare use it. Its modern colloquial descendants — the vigorous insertion of an intensifier into the middle of an adjective — are the same figure adapted to a different register.
Tmesis is nearly impossible to use in formal writing without sounding either coy or vulgar. Its natural home is in dialogue, in humour, and in the reproduction of a particular kind of vernacular. Used well, it captures a voice; used badly, it looks like a typo.
“This is not Romeo, he's some other where.”
Keep reading the glossary
The use of one part of speech as another — most often a noun used as a verb.
A newly coined word or expression, often minted to capture something the existing vocabulary cannot.
The deliberate use of a grammatically 'wrong' form for rhetorical effect.
A sentence whose ending redefines or subverts the meaning of its beginning.