Terrify and Terrific

I investigate whether there is a systematic relation in present-day English between words of the form Xify and those of the form Xific (e.g., terrify and terrific). Data gathered from the Oxford English Dictionary Online (OEDO) do not support any such relation. The same method does support positing a systematic relation among the sets Xification, Xificatory, and Xificative. More generally, the OEDO is shown to be a useful tool for investigating the morphology of patterns borrowed into English from other languages, notably French and Latin, in order to discover which apparent patterns are viable in the language. Keywords: Oxford English Dictionary, morphological borrowing, productivity, French, Latin