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nep-
quickinfo

Nep- is a category-neutral prefixoid, productively attaching to nouns to form nouns like nepartikelen fake articles and occasionally to adjectives to form words like nepversleten fake worn out. The general meaning is false, imitative, fake.

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Nep- [nɛp] is a category-neutral prefixoid derived from the noun nep fake (as in dat pistool is nep that gun is fake) or the verb neppen to cheat (as in ze hebben me genept they have cheated on me), both of which ultimately go back to German Nepp (Etymologiebank). Nep- productively attaches to nouns to form nouns like nepartikelen fake articles and neptaxichauffeur fake taxi driver. Occasionally it also combines with adjectives to form words like nepversleten fake worn out. Nep is an independent phonological word and carries stress. Syllabification respects the morphological boundary: nep-onderhandelingen pseudo-negotiations. The prefixoid is in competion with the foreign prefix pseudo and the indigenous prefixoid namaak. The semantics of formations with nep is compositional, the meaning of the whole being a function of the meaning of the parts, but is not intersective: a neppistool fake gun is not a type of gun, but rather something that is not a gun, although it shares certain properties with a true gun.

extra

The syntactic category of nep- is unclear. Dictionaries traditionally categorize it as a noun, so one might also view nep- as a left part of a compound rather than a prefix. However, the alleged noun occurs in predicative position only, without an article, as in dat pistool is nep that gun is fake. Some users treat nep as an adjective, given internet examples such as Ik kreeg een neppe e-mail I received a fake-e e-email with adjectival inflection; in predicative use, adverbial modification is possible (dat pistool is hartstikke nep that gun is completely fake) which may be taken as an argument that nep is an adjective in this usage as well. It is also possible that nep- derives from the verb neppen cheat (as in ze hebben me genept they have cheated me).

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