2501: -eroo/-eroonie Oct 17, 2021

We usually think of suffixes as being grammatical in function— like how'-ed' makes something past tense or participial; '-(e)s' makes something plural or signals 3rd person present etc.—but this is not necessary. For example, '-eroo' (or its variants including '-eroonie') as in "the old switcheroo" or "We're going on a tripperoonie". This does not add anything grammatically and arguably doesn't even add anything semantically for the individual word, but it does make the overall sentence more colloquial, jovial, or familiar. In this sense, this is like a diminutive which makes things sound affectionate, or literally small, but is not exactly the same.