{"id":17542,"date":"2018-07-19T07:38:13","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=17542"},"modified":"2018-07-19T07:38:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:38:13","slug":"the-aster-suffix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2018\/07\/19\/the-aster-suffix\/","title":{"rendered":"The -aster suffix"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>The OED Word of the Day is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/87296\">historiaster<\/a>, defined as <i> An inferior or mediocre historian<\/i>. This gives me a chance to write about the <i>aster<\/i> suffix, which is a favorite of mine, and which I don\u2019t use often enough. It\u2019s just a derogatory suffix indicating inferiority: a poetaster is a terrible poet; a medicaster is a terrible doctor (something a bit different, I think, from a quack); an astrologaster is \u2026 an astrologist. But it\u2019s a great opportunity for a refined dig at an enemy. People have described their (obviously inferior) enemies as militasters, musicasters, scientasters, and even complementasters. I think it\u2019s a bit petty, honestly, to criticize someone for making lame compliments, but also it does seem to take the <i>e<\/i> and not the <i>i<\/i> in its admittedly infrequent usage, which seems even odder. I could complain, but at the risk of being called a philologaster or even a grammaticaster, or I suppose if we were criticizing my use of the Greek roots, a Classicaster. So, instead of either complementaster or complimentaster, I will prefer the term encomiaster.\r\n<p>I like the idea of a criticaster, but I have to wonder how low one would have to sink to be described as a punditaster. I mean, just being wrong and boring wouldn\u2019t be enough, would it? I suppose one could be adequate at writing, but terrible at the part of the job that involves going on the talk shows, which would make you a broadcasteraster, wouldn\u2019t it?\r\n<p>Being a bad priest makes you a clericaster and being bad at theology makes you a theologaster, but being bad at heresy makes you a hereticaster. Man, that\u2019s harsh, innit? Being called a heretic, well, there\u2019s a little respect in that. But a hereticaster\u2026 stoning that guy is just a waste of perfectly good rocks. Don\u2019t need to tie him to the stake for that sick burn, bro-aster.\r\n<p>Oh, speaking of fratrasters, I don\u2019t see any usage of inferior family words\u2014no matrasters or patrasters or filiasters, avunculasters or sororiasters. A grandmaster is something else.\r\n<p>Thanks,<br>-Ed.\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maledicta"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17542"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17545,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542\/revisions\/17545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}