Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Tripartite words

Consider:
insofar
whatsoever
hithertofore
nonetheless
nevertheless
Triple compounds.  That awesome feature of the English language what says, "It's just "awe" plus "some", that's kind of bland, don't you think?  Can't we get another word in there somehow?" and, for a brief shining moment, remembers its Germanic roots.

Some things that you might think are triple compounds aren't.  "Notwithstanding" was never three words, for example.  The "with" was a prefix instead of a a standalone.

Regardless, these words are fun and I'd like to know all of them but don't know how one would go about looking it up so I'm just going to ask you to share the tripartite words you know.

Please, in the comments, share the tripartite words you know.

1 comment:

  1. Whosoever
    Whensoever
    Wheresoever
    Whomsoever
    Whichsoever
    Whithersoever

    Counterclockwise
    Nevertheless
    Notwithstanding



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