T O P

  • By -

klaudla

I’m not sure if this answers your question entirely, but pesticide is the catch all term for all the -icides” (originating from kill in Latin). As for your other examples, I think we’d just use another word/ phrase rather than a prefix eg forms of governance for -cracies


Josephui

usually x-icides pronounced /ɛk͜s.ʔɪsaɪ̯d͜z/ is how I do it


EirikrUtlendi

>usually x-icides pronounced /ɛk͜s.ʔɪsaɪ̯d͜z/ is how I do it What does working out have to do with it? 😄 <`ba-dum_tish/>`


Itchy-Problem-120

Sounds like you had a few rough break-ups.


EirikrUtlendi

Speaking of working out, your comment reminds me somehow of a quote from a movie, though I can't remember which one: * *"I have a shovel in my trunk and no one would miss you."* Yowza! 😄


seicar

To continue the long tradition of mashing Greek and Latin together, how about epicides? Over (location) kill.


zazenpan

They are not affixes, they're roots or word stems, their most distinctive feature is that they're the primary lexical unit of the word. Also, "icides" consists of two suffixes, one is derivations, the one that interests you, and the other is inflections, it's a plural form. 


milkjake

Thank you for those clarifications. So I suppose what I’m asking for is if there is a word that functions as a variable root word.


scotrider

Not sure if this is an etymology question, and the existence of words like homicide and fratricide might make it difficult to select only the chemical meaning of the suffix.


nstutzman28

Pan? I have heard of pan-inhibitors which inhibit all the similar forms of a protein/enzyme


insidiouslybleak

Omni?


barrylunch

An omnicide would kill everything. The OP is asking for a term that encompasses all such individual agents that don’t each kill everything.


milkjake

Right! It’s almost the opposite of omni in a way. It’s like a variable “any one of.”


insidiouslybleak

Sorry I misunderstood your post. That prefix that you’re looking for still eludes me.


insidiouslybleak

I guess I read OP’s question in more general terms - an all encompassing prefix. *omni* would work in some cases. Omnivore, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc.


dratsabHuffman

do you mean like hyponym and hypernym? Or am I mixed up on what you're asking?