Geek-out-ery

From the Sydney Writers Centre email bulletin:

Did you know: What is a ‘tmesis’?

Tmesis is an actual word. I was surprised when I typed it and it didn’t come up as a spelling error! It’s the only word in the English language beginning with ‘tm’ and it means ‘the separation of parts of a compound word by an intervening word or words’.

You’ll see it happen a lot in informal writing or on Twitter and Facebook. It’s basically the insertion of one word inside another. For example:

‘a whole-nother-story’
‘abso-frikkin-lutely’
‘put it back any-old-where’

The word comes from the Greek ‘tmēsis’ meaning ‘cutting’.