#sneme snail meme

Also the “snake X, or snX” and “snX (snail X)” memes are an interesting example of a blending process becoming a fully productive morphological process- people don’t form a new blend of snake/snail with whatever the second word is every time, they’ve simplified it to “replace the first onset with /sn/” and it can now be applied freely!

Similar things have happened in the past- consider the “-gate” morpheme, from Watergate, that creates words for scandals. (E.g.- god help us- “Gamergate.”) “-gate” is a totally normal suffix now, even though it began life as a pattern of blending Watergate with other words.

The interesting thing about the /sn/ memes is that this process is subtractive- it usually deletes material from the original word, and replaces it with the /sn/ morpheme. Subtractive morphology is cool!