Word.ws English Dictionary

markedness

markedness noun: the quality of a word, form or phoneme that is considered to be more complicated, less natural or stranger than the usual form.

Noun

markedness (countable and uncountable, plural markednesses)

  1. The quality of a word, form or phoneme that is considered to be more complicated, less natural or stranger than the usual form.
    • Using the word "comedienne" instead of "comedian" can be seen as an example of markedness.

Forms of markedness

pluralmarkednesses

Origin of markedness

From marked + -ness.

Words formed from markedness

Phrases with markedness

Questions about markedness

What does markedness mean?
Markedness means the quality of a word, form or phoneme that is considered to be more complicated, less natural or stranger than the usual form.
What part of speech is markedness?
Markedness is a noun.
What is the plural of markedness?
The plural of markedness is markednesses.

Words near markedness in the dictionary

  1. marked to model
  2. marked up
  3. marked with a white stone
  4. marked-up
  5. markedly
  6. markedness
  7. markedness constraint
  8. markedness constraints
  9. markednesses
  10. markee
  11. markees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: markedness (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: “markedness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/markedness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.