#Linguistics crime of the day: the German word "Belletristik".

Germans needed to talk about "fiction literature authors" in the 1800s. They borrowed "belles-lettres" from French. They murdered the spelling into "Belletr" and attached a "-ist" suffix to make it: "Belletrist", the person who writes belles-lettres.

But oops, they forgot to first import the word for "fiction literature" itself. It's fine, just add another "-ik" suffix. "Belletristik", the field practiced by a "Belletrist".

The end result is so unhinged that as a french speaker I didn't even recognize the etymology before checking a dictionary. Someone deserves some language jail time for this.

@delroth Compare beletrystyka (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beletrystyka) :)