Suffix
-ology
- Alternative form of -logy, used for phonological reasons when the preceding morpheme ends in certain consonant sounds.
- (often humorous) added to an ordinary English word to create a name for a (possibly non-existent) field of study.
1843, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, The Attache; or, Sam Slick in England:Qell, he knows all about mineralogy, and geology, and astrology, and every thing a'most, except what he ought to know, and that is dollar-ology.
1857, Delia Bacon, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded:...so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence...
1916, Jack London, The Little Lady of the Big House:It seems he'd been making original researches in anthropology, or folk-lore-ology, or something like that.
1998, British Telecom advert from 1988 with Maureen Lipman - Ology:He gets an -ology and says he failed!
2010 October 17, Hadley Freeman, “Tattoos: what makes one spiritual and another Katona-esque?”, in The Guardian:Yet it is interesting to research the tattoo-ology of Katona right after a yoga class.