Emphatic -mst in Question Words

[ysabetwordsmith]

heartsinger came up with this brilliant idea:

*I've decided that since "whomst" is now an emphatic way of saying "who" in the interrogative, all the other question words can have similar treatment. Whymst, wheremst, whenmst, howmst.

Since English is in a state of high-change right now, anything can shift, including things that are almost never malleable like core grammatic features. So it has a chance of escaping into the wild.

Some of these are more pronounceable than others. I think "whenmst" would collapse to "whenst" and "whatmst" to "whatst" though.

Consider that English used to have a larger range of inflections: where (at), whither (where to), whence (where from). So wheremst fits right in as a way to add extra meaning, kind of like "where the fuck" only not crude. <3

Yeah, this is awesome, I'm backing this.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Whenst is already a word I believe. Albeit an archaic one.

Hmm ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I found a few references for it as "when only" or "when whilst" but there's very little about it.

[we_are_spc]

I am ok with this! xd

-T~

[heartsinger]

Lol, I actually went "wait no one is going to actually say 'whenmst', 'whenst' makes more sense". I waffled about it. Also I forgot "what" omg lol

[krait]

I would like to propose "whamst" as an alternative to "whatst," because it sounds so much more emphatic. :D

Hmm ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

To me it's more emphatic but less clear. However, the linguistic rule is 1 speaker, 1 vote. By all means try it out and see if it works!