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#Linguistics crime of the day: the German word "Belletristik".

Germans needed to talk about "fiction literature authors" in the 1800s. They borrowed "belles-lettres" from French. They murdered the spelling into "Belletr" and attached a "-ist" suffix to make it: "Belletrist", the person who writes belles-lettres.

But oops, they forgot to first import the word for "fiction literature" itself. It's fine, just add another "-ik" suffix. "Belletristik", the field practiced by a "Belletrist".

in reply to Pierre Bourdon

The end result is so unhinged that as a french speaker I didn't even recognize the etymology before checking a dictionary. Someone deserves some language jail time for this.
in reply to Pierre Bourdon

Yup, it also migrated to Czech, Russian, Belarussian, Lithuanian, and Slovak have similar word for this meaning (according to wiktionary, which also claims that it came from German to Polish).
in reply to Pierre Bourdon

Also, if you haven't noticed, the double l got lost along the way :P
in reply to Pierre Bourdon

my linguistics prof often said:
"linguistics is a describing, not a prescribing science"