I know none of us really post to this blog a whole lot anymore (sorry for that, life just got in the way), but I’ve got something to say and this has the biggest platform of all my MOGAI/LIOM related accounts, so here I am. I should also say that I don’t exactly know how to word this post. Normally, when any of us have gotten involved in these situations in the past, there’s already been some amount of criticism of said thing before hand, so it was easy to just say “hey, [x]/[x] is wrong/what have you” and leave it at that. This time, though, I’ve never seen anyone else talk about this, and if they have, it’s very clearly not a known thing at the moment. I haven’t even seen any posts from the coiner of this suffix about it. So it feels (to me, at least) that I should do a little more and I’m not sure what that ‘more’ is/should be.
I should also say, I don’t intend this to be a callout of any particular user/users or to cause a witch hunt or anything like that. This is just an information post to maybe avoid another -coric situation, where it it’s become so consistently misused that it almost feels like there won’t ever be a point where it completely stops. Please don’t be mean to anyone who does the thing I’m about to talk about or anything like that. If anyone would like to kindly bring their attention to the issue, go for it, but don’t be anything less than 100% civil.
With all that out of the way, the post:
There’s veen a lot of misuse of the suffix -ica, recently, and I figured someone should clear that up. And since this account has more than 1000 followers and I’ve noticed it, I figured it should be me.
-ica is a suffix coined on November 19, 2020, by now inactive user Genderstalgia. It, along with -ical and -musica, were coined as suffixes specifically for Musicagenders. That phrase was actually used verbatim in the coining post if anyone would like to fact check me on it. It’s not a general-use, uncoined suffix, like -ic or -ian to name a few, or something like -cenic that was coing to be used for pretty much anything. It, along with its counterparts, have a very explicit, relatively narrow, meaning.
Despite that, there’s been a surge of misuse of it over the past few months to a year (the archive on here and on the site are a good bit behind, so I’m not completely up to date). Thankfully, it hasn’t gotten as vad as -coric or even -comfic, but it’s definitely an issue. To the extent that we’ve created a list for them on Genderpedia and one that has more than double digit pages, here. That page isn’t linked so anyone can go harass the coiners with terms listed there or to drive traffic to the site, it’s just to demonstrate that there is a good amount of terms that are a part of this issue. In addition to that, there are multiple terms that we haven’t archived for whatever reason (mostly just time and fluctuating dis/interest).
I don’t know what specifically I can encourage anyone do outside of a few things. Anyone who has or thinks they might have terms that misuse -ica, or any other suffix for that matter, just go check! And, if you find them, just find a different suffix! There are coined things like -cenic and, in some specific cases, -aesic, -corian, -comfin, etc. (although those last ones do have specific definitions that might not fit, so check those too) and non-coined, general things, like -ic and -ian, or even a currently-unused look-alike like -eca, -yca, or something else like that!
Also, I’d generally recommend checking to see if any kind of suffix/term ending you’ve about to use has been coined and if it would apply. I know that’s crazy hard, because of how many there are and have been coined, and scattered information, but there are some sources that can help. We have an incomplete list of affixes, here, there’s the suffixes carrd, here, and there’s the account Coiningaffixes, here.
I know, looking at the coric/comfic/etc situations, there’s no way this one post will fix everything. It’s just unrealistic to thing that. But hopefully the reach this account has and, hopefully, general encouragement of checking for coinings and being willing to change term names will do something to start to make a dent. In all of these situations!
Thank you for reading, especially this long of a post from a practically inactive account, and have a good night! - Admin Grey
