Category talk:English terms suffixed with -side

Suffix or compound?

Should these words be classified as having -side as a suffix, or being a compound with side? Admittedly this is a hair-splitting question, but there is little overlap between this category and side: Derived terms, so perhaps there is disagreement on this point.

Any thoughts?

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Deletion debate

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Category:English words suffixed with -side

We don't have an entry for -side. I suspect that all of these are compounds with side as the second word of the compound. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:06, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I think none of the meanings given on side match the usage in words like shoreside, which leads me to believe that this is indeed a valid suffix. -- Prince Kassad 21:23, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it means (deprecated template usage) beside (i.e. by the side of). Equinox ◑ 21:25, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I suspect that, historically, the initial formations of all compounds formed in Modern English ending in "side" were nouns and "side" was the head of the compound, giving the compound one of its ordinary meanings. Subsequently some of these added other PoSes by "conversion". That would seem to fit "outside" and "shoreside". "Beside" is derived from Old English.

I don't see how this can be addressed at the level of the Category rather than by correcting the etymologies one at a time to make sure that we have it right in each case. Once it is depopulated, deletion is trivial. DCDuring TALK 01:34, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

• If a lexeme like "side" heads words that have a different part of speech than it is, does that imply it "is" a suffix. It certainly seems not the default situation for lexemes that are productive. The default is a word like "fireside" which is a noun, among other PoSes. In contrast, the words in this category seem to most commonly be adjectives or adjectives (locative adjuncts) and rarely nouns. I don't think we can do justice to this kind of formation if we rely on the entry at [[side]] unless we have a usage note of an unprecedented nature. Keep, I think. DCDuring TALK 15:39, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Kept and created -side. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:32, 16 November 2010 (UTC)