Tue 11 Aug 2009 When I hear people say something like “I’ll try
and do it better”, I inwardly wince. When I hear people use a
word like ironical (instead of ironic), I die a little death.
However, in the latter case at least, it turns out that my
annoyance could be misplaced, and in fact, the “-ic” versus
“-ical” question is a bit of an unresolved mystery. In fact, it
seems like it points to some weirdness going on in the English
language. The problem arises because you can turn many nouns
into adjectives by adding a various suffixes. Some common ones
are the “-ic” suffix (e.g. history becomes historic), the “-ish”
suffix (e.g. book becomes bookish), the “-al” suffix (e.g.
nation becomes national), and the “-y” suffix (e.g. box becomes
boxy). However, suffixes can be added to other suffixes, and you
can easily end up with abominations. Why do we need words like
ironical, symmetrical, or problematical, when ironic, symmetric
and problematic are already doing a fine job? I admit that there
are a few places wher