-bucket
-bucket – suffisso
Is this pasty-faced lardbucket for real?
She was six weeks old and being a fuss-bucket.
Gus is a trouble-making lovebucket and Oliver the kitten is our newest addition.
This sleazebucket is known for his tireless deceptive acts of self-promotion.
Nel corso della recente campagna elettorale in Gran Bretagna, un giornalista del quotidiano Daily Mail ha attirato l’attenzione del pubblico quando ha fatto una domanda retorica alla premier Theresa May, chiedendole se fosse ‘a bit of a glumbucket’. E anche se l’espressione era sconosciuta, tutti hanno capito immediatamente cosa volesse dire.
Il sostantivo bucket è spesso accompagnato da un altro sostantivo che ne specifica la funzione, tipo water bucket, beer bucket, fire bucket ecc. E sono di lunga data numerosi nomi composti, da gutbucket (uno stile di jazz o blues) a rust bucket, ovvero un catorcio. Il giornalista però (quasi sicuramente senza rendersene conto) stava usando –bucket come libfix, elemento suffissale che attaccato a una parola consente di formarne una nuova col significato di ‘un tipo particolare di persona’. Perciò, negli esempi dati sopra, lardbucket è una persona notevolmente sovrappeso; fussbucket è qualcuno che fa un sacco di storie e lovebucket una persona (o nel nostro caso, un animale, presumibilmente un cane o un gatto) affettuosa e coccolona.
Origini del termine
Anche se nel British National Corpus o nel recente e vasto enTenTen13 corpus non ci sono occorrenze di glumbucket, l’espressione segue la formula collaudata dell’unione di una parola e -bucket per formare termini descrittivi molto efficaci e di solito, ma non sempre, dalle connotazioni negative.
Traduzione di Loredana Riu
-bucket – suffix
Is this pasty-faced lardbucket for real?
She was six weeks old and being a fuss-bucket.
Gus is a trouble-making lovebucket and Oliver the kitten is our newest addition.
This sleazebucket is known for his tireless deceptive acts of self-promotion.
In the course of the recent UK general election campaign, a journalist from the right-wing Daily Mail caught people’s attention when he asked the Prime Minister rhetorically if she was ‘a bit of a glumbucket’. Even though most people had never heard the term, it was immediately clear what he meant.
Of course the noun bucket is frequently found in company, usually with another noun: water bucket, beer bucket, fire bucket and so on. There are also a few well-established compounds, such as gutbucket (a raw style of jazz or blues) and rust bucket, a rusty and dilapidated car, boat or other vehicle. The journalist was doing something rather different, however: he was using –bucket as a libfix, a type of semantically rich suffix that can combine with other words to make new words meaning ‘someone of a particular type’. So a lardbucket is someone who is seriously overweight; a fussbucket is someone who makes a fuss for no reason; and a lovebucket is a person (or, in the case of the quotation above, an animal) who is full of love and affection.
Origins
Although there are no instances of glumbucket in the British National Corpus or in the huge and recent enTenTen13 corpus, it follows a familiar pattern of words combining with –bucket to form colourful and descriptive new words. These generally although not always have negative connotations.
