SUPPLETION

Etymology

Noun

suppletion (usually uncountable, plural suppletions)

The supplying of something lacking.

(linguistics, grammar) The use of an unrelated word or phrase to supply inflected forms otherwise lacking, e.g. using “to be able” as the infinitive of “can”, or “better” as the comparative of “good”, or “went” as the simple past of “go”.

(grammar) More loosely, the use of unrelated (or distantly related) words for semantically related words which may not share the same lexical category, such as father/paternal or cow/bovine.

Usage notes

Strictly speaking, suppletion in linguistics refers only to inflection, such as good/better, which are both adjectives, and this is the most frequent use. It is also used in the looser sense of semantic relations without etymological relations (or with distant etymological relations) such as father/paternal, where these are noun/adjective. However, this latter use is significantly less common and may be considered incorrect.

Source: Wiktionary



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Word of the Day

26 December 2024

CHATTEL

(noun) personal as opposed to real property; any tangible movable property (furniture or domestic animals or a car etc)


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Coffee Trivia

An article published in Harvard Men’s Health Watch in 2012 shows heavy coffee drinkers live longer. The researchers examined data from 400,000 people and found out that men who drank six or more coffee cups per day had a 10% lower death rate.

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