The shop of Aristophanes the carpenter: how comic poets assembled (and disassembled) words

In the Institutio oratoria, Quintilian says that the composition of new words through the device of iungere (“to join”) was a privilege of the Greek writers that their Latin colleagues did not have. This statement is particularly true if we think of the creative language of Greek comedy, as the many brilliant puns invented by Aristophanes and the other poets of Old Comedy witness. This chapter presents, analyses, and discusses a wide choice of comic compounds organised by their grammatical features (compounds with prepositions, prefixes, and suffixes; compounds with proper names), in order to give a comprehensive picture of the imaginative ability shown by Greek comic poets in the creation of new, smart, and funny words.