This paper is about identifying a nuance of social meaning which, I demonstrate, was conveyed in the Early and Late Modern period by the suffix "-oon." The history of non-native suffix "-oon" is presented by means of assembling non-native suffix "-oon" vocabulary in date order and sorting according to etymology. It turns out that standard nonnative "-oon" words (which are few) tended to stabilise early and be of y. A period of enregisterment, c. 1750-1850, is identified by means of scrutiny of non-native "-oon" usage in sixty novels, leading to the conclusion that four or more non-native "-oons" in a literary work signalled vulgarity. A link is made between the one-quarter non-European "-oons" brought to English via colonial trade, and the use of such "-oons" by non-noble merchants, traders and their customers splashing out on luxury foreign commodities. Thus, it is found that a suffix borrowed from Romance languages in the Middle English period received fresh input during the Early Modern period via non-European borrowings, resulting in sociolinguistic enregisterment in the Late Modern period.