History
The suffix existed in English in a dormant state for a long time, in borrowed terms. An example is raskolnik, recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary as known since 1723. There have been two main waves of the introduction of this suffix into English language. The first was driven by Yinglish words contributed by Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe. The second surge was observed after the launch of the first Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957.
In his book The American Language, first published in 1919, H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) credited the mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns to Al Capp's American comic strip Li'l Abner (1934–77) rather than to the influence of "Sputnik", first recorded in 1957, or "beatnik", first recorded in 1958.
Read more about this topic: -nik
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)