-ist

There is something about the suffix, -ist. It's a productive suffix in that you can easily coin novel words by adding -ist to the noun. It has multiple meanings in the English language, corresponding to (i) "advocate of", (ii) "user of/expert in", or (iii) "detractor of". Although use (iii) is probably only a recently developed use of this morpheme (def: a minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units, e.g., the or man), it appears to be the most productive.

Chris, WTF are you talking about??!!!

Well, I guess this all came out of the election for the Democratic nominee. Someone's racist....someone's sexist....sounds like we have (iii) covered. How cool would it be if we could change the perception to (i)?!

Okay class, open your books to page 123 and let's review our vocabulary words for next week's pop quiz.