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enfranchise

Whodunit

Senior Member
Deutschland ~ Deutsch/Sächsisch
Does even the AE spelling of "to enfranchise" look like that? Shouldn't the word end in "-ize" in American English as many words in "-ise" (BE) do? Could you imagine that it has to do with its stem? For instance, "realize" has the root "real", so "-ize" is a suffix. "Enfranchise" has not such a stem, so "-ise" is not a suffix.

Am I on the right track? 👁 Smile :)
Whodunit said:
Does even the AE spelling of "to enfranchise" look like that? Shouldn't the word end in "-ize" in American English as many words in "-ise" (BE) do? Could you imagine that it has to do with its stem? For instance, "realize" has the root "real", so "-ize" is a suffix. "Enfranchise" has not such a stem, so "-ise" is not a suffix.

Am I on the right track? 👁 Smile :)
It is a word of French origin and was adopted on-its-face as being immediately usable to the English speaker, hence it has remained unchanged. It is unlikely to ever change since has the below signifance.

Greetings Who,

I'm rather surprised you didn't check the WR English dictionary before posting your question:


 Averb
1 enfranchise

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I think he utilise the dictionary, cuchu, and his question reflected his surprize that the AE uzage would have an "s" when everyone knowz that we prefer to spell the suffix "-ise" with the sonorised "s"... that is to say, the "zzzz". I can't blame any Who for being confuzed.

Cheerz.
fenixpollo said:
I think he utilise the dictionary, cuchu, and his question reflected his surprize that the AE uzage would have an "s" when everyone knowz that we prefer to spell the suffix "-ise" with the sonorised "s"... that is to say, the "zzzz". I can't blame any Who for being confuzed.

Cheerz.

FP, are you sure you've spelt sonorized incorrectly? Soundz dry and sandy.

👁 Smile :)
fenixpollo said:
I think he utilise the dictionary, cuchu, and his question reflected his surprize that the AE uzage would have an "s" when everyone knowz that we prefer to spell the suffix "-ise" with the sonorised "s"... that is to say, the "zzzz". I can't blame any Who for being confuzed.

Cheerz.

You hit the nail on the head. But back to the origin of the word, I think Cuchu's link (or quote) was quite helpful, since it says something about an extended French stem -iss-, so that "enfranchize" would be too Americanized, I guess.

Thanks for the answers, and thanks to Fenix ... I'm more confused than ever before now. 👁 Big Grin :D
This '-ise' is simply part of the word root, and not the suffix '-ize' in a variant spelling. Likewise for surprise, revise, surmise, devise, advertise, etc.
DaleC said:
This '-ise' is simply part of the word root, and not the suffix '-ize' in a variant spelling. Likewise for surprise, revise, surmise, devise, advertise, etc.

Precisely. Spelling it "enfranchize" would be an example of hyper-correction.
elroy said:
Precisely. Spelling it "enfranchize" would be an example of hyper-correction.

After thinking it over, I consider "enfranchize" strictly wrong. Because otherwise the stem would be "enfranch-", but that's not a word. The next noun that comes to my mind is "enfranchisement". If you'd like to speak about "hyper-correction", the noun should be "enfranchement".

Ok, once again, I thank you. You have satisfactorily answered my question. 👁 Smile :)
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