iad: A Progeny of the Dunciad

Fashions in literature run not only to theme, form, influence, and diction but also to title and even part of a title. For a century following the Dunciad an extraordinary number of productions had titles ending in -iad ( -ead, -ad, -ade ). The presence of this suffix denoted that the work dealt with the subject suggested by the name to which those final letters were affixed. The NED gives the English suffix -ad as representing the Greek -άδ-α , forming feminine patronymics and hence used in names of poems. The mere -ad did not often appear but yielded to the more euphonious -iad and sometimes -ead ; the -ade was the French spelling.