1877: The New, Informal -ster Feb 4, 2020

The agentive '-ster' suffix, as in 'spinster' is no longer as productive as '-er', but that doesn't mean people have stopped generating new words with it. Other terms like 'hipster', 'bankster', and the proper nouns 'Napster' and 'Blockster' all feature a different, new use of '-ster', clearly separate from the origins as a feminine form of '-er'. This is thought to convey an particularly informal tone, and is increasingly popular for such causal registers.

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