Back in 1972 the Italian author Gianni Rodari (1920 to 1980) published a book titled Grammatica della fantasia. Earlier this year an English translation of it by Jack Zipes was published with the title of The Grammar of Fantasy: An introduction to the art of inventing stories. I particularly enjoyed reading the eighth chapter on pages 70 to 73 which is titled The Arbitrary Prefix:
“One way to make words productive, in a fantastic sense, is to deform them. Children do this for fun, spontaneously, in games, which also have a serious side, because it helps them to explore the possibilities of words, to master them, by pushing them into new variations. Games, that is, stimulate their freedom as ‘speakers,’ with a right to their own personal words (thank you, Monsieur Saussure). Such play encourages nonconformity in children.
The arbitrary prefix was developed in keeping with the spirit of these games, and I have frequently made good use of it myself.
The prefix un- is enough to transform the word ‘penknife’ – a negligible, everyday object that might yet be dangerous and aggressive – into an ‘unpenknife,’ a fantastic and pacifist object that doesn’t sharpen pencils, but allows their tips to grow back when they wear down. Naturally, this would enrage stationery store owners and the ideological champions of consumerism. There are sexual allusions here, too, that are very well concealed but are nonetheless still perceivable by children, albeit subconsciously.
The same prefix gives us ‘coat unhanger,’ the opposite of a ‘coat hanger.’ A ‘coat unhanger’ isn’t used to hang clothes up, but rather drops them off, shedding clothes whenever they are needed. All of this takes place in a country where the shop windows do not have glass, stores do not have cash registers, and coat checks do not require claim tickets. We’ve gone straight from a prefix to utopia itself. But its’s certainly not forbidden to imagine a city in the future where coats are free as water or air. And utopia is just as educational as the critical spirit. All that’s needed is to transfer utopia from the world of the intellect (to which Antonio Gramsci rightly ascribes methodical pessimism) to that of the will (whose principle characteristic, tates Gramsci, must be optimism). In sum, even the coat hanger, as such, is only a ‘paper tiger.’
I also invented a country with un- in front of it, where there is an ‘uncannon’ that is used to ‘undo’ war, rather than wage it. The ‘sense of nonsense’ (this expression was coined in Italian by Alfonso Gatto) appears to me to be transparent in this case.
The prefix bi- gives us the ‘bipen,’ which writes everything doubly (and perhaps is useful for twin students). There is also the ‘bipipe’ for smokers who want double the pleasure, and the ‘bi-Earth’:
This is a second Earth. We live on this one and that one at the same time. Everything that stands on its head here is on its feet there. (Science fiction has already made use of similar hypotheses. That alone seems to me a legitimate enough reason to talk about this with children.)
In one of my older stories, I introduced ‘archdogs,’ ‘archbones,’ and ‘trinoculars’ (a product of the prefix tri-, also used in ‘tricow,’ an animal unfortunately unknown to zoology).
I keep in my archives an ‘antiumbrella,’ but have not yet figured out a practical use for it.
The prefix de- lends itself wonderfully to destruction. Starting from this prefix, we can easily arrive at the word ‘deassignment,’ which refers to an assignment, unlike normal homework, that one does not have to do. Far from it, as the point is for the ‘deassignment’ to be destroyed or torn to pieces.
Returning to zoology, to free it from the parentheses in which I left it, let’s take up the ‘vicedog’ and the ‘subcat.’ I offer these animals as gifts to whomever needs them to populate their stories.
In passing, I’ll also offer Italo Calvino, the author of both The Non-Existent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, a ‘semighost’ who is half-human, made of flesh and blood, and half-ghost, clad in sheets and chains, which lends itself wonderfully to stories combining moments of stupendous fear with laughter.
‘Superman’ already exists on comics and is a striking example of the application of the ‘fantastic prefix’ (albeit a pure imitation of Nietzsche, poor guy, and his Ubermensch). But of you want a ‘supergoalie’ (idol of the football field) or a ‘supermatch’ (capable of setting the entire Milky Way on fire), all you have to do is make them up yourself.
More recent prefixes, such as micro-, mini-, and maxi-, which emerged during the 20 th century seem to me to be particularly productive. Here I offer – still free of charge – a ‘microhippo,’ raised at home in an aquarium; a ‘miniskyscraper,’ which fits into a minidrawer’ and is inhabited only by ‘minibillionaires’; and a ‘maxiblanket.’ Capable of covering in winter all the people who would die of cold.
It's probably superfluous to point out, but the ‘fantastic prefix’ is nothing but a particular case of the ‘fantastic binomial,’ with the following components: the prefix, chosen to produce new images; and the usual word, chosen to be enobled through deformation.
If I were to suggest an exercise here, it would be to fill in two parallel columns with randomly chosen prefixes and nouns and then ask to randomly join them. I’ve done it myself. Ninety-nine percent of the marriages arranged according to this rite failed, but one percent resulted in happy and productive couplings.”
I have blogged about prefixes in a post on April 20, 2018 titled Playing with words: PRO or CON? and on December 20, 2024 in another post titled A comic strip about flipping prefixes from ex- to in-.
And there is an article in The New Yorker by Joan Acocella on December 7, 2020 titled The Italian Genius Who Mixed Marxism and Children’s Literature.
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