Inedibilification

Photo generated by DALL·E 3

An Esperanto article gave me an idea for an English word: “inedibilify” = to make (something) inedible. And its corresponding noun form “inedibilification”. I suspect you might have even been able to parse out that meaning before I suggested it, because that “-ify” suffix in English is pretty neat for word-building and often acts pretty much like the Esperanto “-ig” (see posts about “ig”):

Manĝi, manĝebla, nemanĝebla, nemanĝebligi

To eat, edible, inedible, to make inedible (inedibilify!)

Vi nemanĝebligis mian kukon

You inedibilified my cake! (made my cake inedible)

But I’ve been sitting on telling you about this, because vexingly, I couldn’t think of an English term for the actual original Esperanto inspiration: nemanĝebliĝi = to become inedible

Post tago en la suno, la sciuro nemanĝebliĝis.

After a day in the sun, the squirrel became inedible.

Is there some kind of English suffix for “to become <something>” like our useful Esperanto “-iĝ”? Or is Esperanto just far too cool for English? (see posts about “-iĝ”)

And just because I always have to take things too far, using the tool suffix “-il” (which when attached to X makes something which makes/does X) – see posts about -il):

Ĉiu scias ke brokolo estas nur nemanĝebligilo.

Everyone knows that broccoli is just an inedibilifier.

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