hyperforeign
hyperforeign adjective: resulting from the misapplication of foreign reading rules, such as dropping the ‘t’ in claret.
Adjective
hyperforeign (not comparable)
- Resulting from the misapplication of foreign reading rules, such as dropping the ‘t’ in claret.
- This relation is further complicated by the literate persons who know something of the foreign pronunciation and orthography. A speaker who knows the spelling jabot and the English form [ˈžɛbow] (for French [žabo]), may revise tête-à-tête [ˈtejteˌtejt] (from French [tɛ:t a tɛːt]) to a hyper-foreign...1933, Leonard Bloomfield, Language, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, page 449
- Half-literate persons, who try, without proper knowledge, to pronounce a foreign language, are apt to coin hyper-foreign forms, a special kind of hyper-correction.1970, Joshua Blau, On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, p 17
Forms of hyperforeign
| alternative form | hyper-foreign |
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Origin of hyperforeign
First use appears c. 1933 as hyper-foreign, and c. 1983 as hyperforeign. From hyper- + foreign. Compare hypercorrect and hypercorrection.
Words formed from hyperforeign
Questions about hyperforeign
- What does hyperforeign mean?
- Hyperforeign means resulting from the misapplication of foreign reading rules, such as dropping the ‘t’ in claret.
- What part of speech is hyperforeign?
- Hyperforeign is an adjective.
Words near hyperforeign in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hyperforeign (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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Cite this entry: “hyperforeign.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hyperforeign. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.