Word.ws English Dictionary

advergence

advergence noun: the evolution of a mimic to resemble its model more closely.

Noun

advergence (uncountable)

  1. The evolution of a mimic to resemble its model more closely.
  2. The evolution of a dialect to resemble the standard language more closely.
    • The main process in regiolect formation is dialect-to-standard advergence, but there are two caveats to this statement.2005, Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera, Dirk Geeraerts, Perspectives on Variation, page 25
    • Horizontal convergence that causes divergence in a part of a formerly uniform dialect area can be, and often is, accompanied by vertical convergence, i.e., by advergence to the standard language.2010, Peter Auer, Jürgen Erich Schmidt, Theories and Methods, page 290

Origin of advergence

Coined by evolutionary biologists L. P. Brower and J. van Z. Brower in 1972 for the paper "Parallelism, convergence, divergence, and the new concept of advergence in the evolution of mimicry" on the pattern of convergence, substituting ad- for con- to emphasize the one-sidedness of the approach. Borrowed into linguistics by Peter Auer in 1998. By surface analysis, ad- + verge + -ence, from Latin vergere (“to turn, incline”), from Proto-Italic *wergō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wérg-e-ti, from *h₂werg- (“to turn”).

Questions about advergence

What does advergence mean?
Advergence means the evolution of a mimic to resemble its model more closely.
What part of speech is advergence?
Advergence is a noun.

Words near advergence in the dictionary

  1. adverbophobia
  2. adverbs
  3. advergame
  4. advergames
  5. advergaming
  6. advergence
  7. advermation
  8. Adversane
  9. adversant
  10. adversaria
  11. adversarial

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: advergence (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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