Talk:-ington

-ington
It may be common to see this at the end of a place name, but does it actually have any meaning in modern English? Or is it just a cranberry morpheme? 10:42, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. I'm surprised that survived so long with various people editing it when the definition is completely wrong (you can't romanize something that is already in the Latin alphabet). As far as I can tell it is nothing more than.
 * Wow that's terrible, I say speedy delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:26, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've improved the entry by removing the 'definition' (sad but true). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Do we think that -ingtun is any better? DCDuring TALK 12:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether -ingtun should exist or not, but the current definition is very bad. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is simply the case of two independent, no-longer-productive morphemes being coincidentally found together in some place names (and the surnames derived from them). Chuck Entz (talk) 13:53, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * And, while we're at it, delete,, which seems to have been created solely as something for -ington to link to. I would be astonished if it existed as an actual suffix in Old English. I also have my doubts about -tun, which seems to be just tun as used in compounds (though I notice we have -town). At the very least, we need to take out the reference to -ington/-ingtun Chuck Entz (talk) 14:03, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * And delete -ingatun, too Chuck Entz (talk) 14:14, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Does a suffix have to be productive in order to be catalogued as an entry? I thought it just needed meaning. It is a very prevalent place-name termination (Lexington, Arlington, Wellington, Washington) and the origin is not always simply -ing + -ton. However, to be honest, I really see no value in having place-name terminations in a dictionary, except for interest's sake (the entry at -ville: is very informative). What then about ? Don't we have to be fair? Or can we get -ington: up to the same level? My vote is to improve and re-assess and see if it's worth anything before removing. Personally, I often find myself wandering in thought about such things like: does the '-ington' in "Washington" really mean anything? Where did it come from?. Is Wiktionary the place to help answer these types of questions? Leasnam (talk) 14:20, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It should have been demonstrably productive at some time, I would think. If not, it doesn't seem to meet the linguistic definition of suffix. DCDuring TALK 14:30, 28 August 2012 (UTC)


 * My point is that it isn't a suffix at all. It's two suffixes: -ing, which is used by itself in many town names, as well is with other word elements such as dale and worth, and -ton, which is also commonly found without -ing. It's really a two-step suffixation process: first add -ing to denote "something/someone related to..." and then add -tun "town". In other words, it often means "town of the X-ings". Don't forget, also, that there are Old English personal names ending in -ing, so it sometimes originally meant "X-ing's town". Chuck Entz (talk) 14:46, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The two-step suffixation is a strong hypothesis in two senses: it seems likely to be usually true and it can be disconfirmed with a single counterexample. Some contemporary compound suffixes seem to have been productive in the sense that there is little or no evidence that any intermediate form came into use before the word with the compound suffix. IMO, the synchronic approach to etymology has a lot to answer for here at Wiktionary in terms of failing to meet any burden of empirical demonstration for claims of affixation. DCDuring TALK 14:58, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

deleted all -- Liliana • 17:41, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

-ingtun
Many of the same issue apply. DCDuring TALK 15:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Compounding can be a generator of new suffixes: -ation:, -ative:, -ling:, -kin:, -ren: were all created in this way--though some of these have not remained as transparent as -ington. Leasnam (talk) 19:10, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure. But have either of these ever actually been productive? DCDuring TALK 21:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

-ingatun
I don't necessarily favour deletion, I just thought this entry needed to be considered along with -ingtun. - -sche (discuss) 21:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)