Home » Dictionary » tacular

tacular

–tacular suffix in the forming of nouns, ‘an exciting or extravagant event’ associated with the root; in the forming of adjectives, an intensifier of the root, ‘a lot, great, large, extravagant, excessive.’ Editorial Note: Terms created with –tacular tend to be jocular one-offs, though some, like spooktacular and craptacular, appear to have more endurance. Etymological Note: From a resegmenting of spectacular, in which the syllable tacular splinters off of spec and becomes a combining form. This true segmenting of the word would ordinarily be spectacul, from the Latin spectacul-um ‘a show, spectacle, something worth observing’ and the Latin suffix –ar ‘of a kind; belonging to.’ (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

1 comment
  • Cf. the suffix <-tastic>, which often attaches to the same roots as <-tacular> for forming adjectives.  (“Craptastic” and “craptacular” each return more than 50,000 Google-hits.)

Further reading

Gilded Age (episode #1633)

In her sumptuous new memoir, Jamaican writer Safiya Sinclair describes her escape from a difficult childhood ruled by her tyrannical father. For Sinclair, poetry became a lifeline. Plus: that fizzy chocolate drink called an egg cream contains...

Recent posts