Stupefication

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Aug 29, 2011, at 3:11 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:

>
> In 4th grade at a Catholic school, I used "stupefication" in a class
> assignment, ignorant to the fact that it should have been
> "stupefaction".  The seminarian teaching the class held up my paper
> and laughed at me (what a jerk), offering no explanation as to the
> reason behind this strange morphological form.
>
> Google tells me I'm not the only one using this word -- it's even in
> many headlines.
>
> But I still have no idea what is going on morphologically.  Anyone
> care to elucidate?

given stupefy, stupefication is exactly the form you'd predict from treating -EFY just as a spelling variant of -IFY.

for complex historical reasons, verbs in -EFY (only a few of which are at all common) have derived nouns in -EFACTION:
liquefaction, putrefaction, rarefaction, stupefaction.
plus: satisfaction (satisy), petrifaction (petrify).  and rarifaction as a variant of rarefaction.

then: -IFY verbs normally have derived nouns in -IFICATION, so there's pressure to bring these odd ones into line, and in fact all of them have -IFICATION variants.  for petrifaction, NOAD2 lists petrification as just a variant (and i prefer it, despite the title of George Bernard Shaw's silly one-act play, "Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction").  for the rest, -IFICATION is a non-standard variant, but very very common (in ghits):
liquification, putrification, rarification, stupification; even satisfication.

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org