Talk:-ment

Etymology

changed the etymology from incorrect mentum to the correct mente, as mentum has no relation to ment, see http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=mentum — This unsigned comment was added by 24.68.92.251 (talk) at 11:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC).

I have changed the etymology back to the Latin -amentum. French has two distinct -ment's, one is the adverbial suffix coming from mente, and the other is the nominal suffix coming from -amentum. The English -ment came from the latter. Your source also supports it: see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/-ment (-mentum and -amentum are the same). — TAKASUGI Shinji 01:51, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

RFD discussion: April–September 2017

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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-ment

RfD of the German sense only

This suffix simply does not exist. It exists in Latin where it was used to form some words borrowed into German, but it can never be used independently from those words. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 20:33, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, definitely delete. — Kleio (t · c) 16:57, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Dictionaries or grammars could mention a -ment, cp. canoo (there it's now -ament, -ement, -iment) and de:Vorlage:Neoklassische Formative (Deutsch). But well, "can never be used independently" chould still be correct. -84.161.7.226 21:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Delete. Within a loaning language such as German these are formants, not suffixes in their own sake. Not changed by the fact that word-derivation appendices can describe what function they had as suffixes in the loangiving language. --Tropylium (talk) 12:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

What about Medikament for which the synonym Medizin exists? Or Arrangement and arrangieren? Or is this different? W3ird N3rd (talk) 01:41, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

@W3ird N3rd: Both of these examples would support deleting, since they were borrowed from Latin/French. They were not derived in German using some German word + -ment, so it seems like it was never and is not at all productive in German. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 02:20, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Abstain. It could be worthwhile to include things that look like a prefix or suffix but were never productive in the target language, provided they would be properly labeled to indicate as much. But I am not sure. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:23, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• RFD failed. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:59, 16 September 2017 (UTC)