[Ads-l] rando

[Laurence Horn]

It was beginning to pop up as an entry in some of the NEWJs (New English Word Journals) I collected in my Words class around then, but I don’t have a record of when I first came across it.  It elegantly builds in the pejoration afflicting “random” by then along with the pejorative -o suffix of “wino”, “psycho”, “fatso”, “weirdo”, “sleazo”, etc. (not necessarily all reflecting the same derivation, but contributing to the general feel of the suffix); cf. https://linguistlist.org/issues/9/9-360.html for a useful compilation.  Of course “rando” isn’t < “rand-“ + “-o”, it’s more like “psycho” in repurposing other (stem or combo) material for a suffix; Parkvall calls these "Apocoped O-words".  Maybe “typo” comes in here too (whence “thinko”), along with “klepto” and “nympho”.  Some of these are deader than others.  

LH

> On Dec 9, 2017, at 12:03 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> David Swerdlick, CNN:
> 
> "We're not talking about some *rando* here. We're talking about someone who
> was the deputy district attorney."
> 
> UrbanD has exx. back to 2003.
> 
> JL
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
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