There are many ways of making words—and all of them are sexy;

Coz words are fast and furious and tricksy, stretchy, flexi.

But out of all the modes and means of morph configurations

The best—the zest—the one I trust (and champion) is suppletion.

I love you good and better; I adore you went and go

Bad and worse; paternal, father; bovine, beef and cow

And человек and люди; ἔρχομαι and ἦλθον;

Aller, vais; and be, am, was; the list goes on and on.

So, let’s sing to suppletion, morphology’s first king

As bent-of-shape irregular as Judas’ heinous sin;

The misfit and the cast-out of all morphology

You were the best, you are the first—and ever more will be!

You can give me affixation if you’ve nothing else to sell,

But affixation bores me, it’s a slow-roast morpheme Hell.

It’s abso-blooming-everywhere (look, even infixation)

Suppletion’s a rich uncle; affixes, a poor relation.

Some bang on about ablaut, man~men, mouse~mice, goose~geese

If you ablautise near me, my friend, I’ll kick you in the tooth teeth

I know it’s also verbal (sit~sat, begin~begun)

But come on, ablaut’s boring too; suppletion’s much more fun!

Yes, any process that involves some ‘compensatory lengthening’

Or talks about a vowel change as ‘loosening’ and ‘strengthening’

Has clearly got some hang-ups; no ablaut’s needed here;

Get some suppletives over and buy another round of beer.

Semitic non-concatenative consonantal roots!

If suppletion’s Anglo-Saxons, then this mode is the Jutes;

Its elegance is legendary, that’s not in dispute

But my suppletion still wins out: it’s short, and swift and sweet.

Incorporation’s all the rage—just email Mark C Baker

And he’ll reply with ‘Something, Blah, polysynthesis parameter’.

But it’s just a form of compounding: pan-fried onions, breastfeed

Far too systematic; it’s suppletion that we need.

Stinky old conversion is the mode that’s most distressing:

How dull and simply lazy; you can’t make words like that:

It’s like vegging on the sofa, eating pies and getting fat.

So now we’ve done a grand Grand Tour of some morphologies;

Each of them’s unique and has its idiosyncrasies.

But only one is individuality per se:

Suppletion. It just does its thing and simply doesn’t care.

It crops up simply everywhere: in English a and some

And Latin has it too of course in esse, fui and sum;

Eye, ocular; arm, brachial; and child and paediatrics.

Oh, sweet suppletion: friend and fun—and funny—and funtastic.

Suppletion’s not just good for you, it’s better than the rest.

Suppletion’s not just good for you, it is the very best.

The misfit and the cast-out of all morphology:

You were the best, you are the first—and ever more will be!