Word.ws English Dictionary

non-standard

non-standard is the alternative form of nonstandard.

Meaning of nonstandard

Adjective

nonstandard (comparative more nonstandard, superlative most nonstandard)

  1. Not standard.
    Synonyms:
    unstandard
    Antonyms:
    standard
  2. Not conforming to the standard variety, or to the language as used by the majority of its speakers.
    • The resulting sequence of covert wh-pronoun + Complementiser has an overt counterpart in nonstandard varieties of English, as the following example (recorded from a BBC radio programme) illustrates:
      (91) England put themselves in a position [whereby that they took a lot of credit for tonightʼs...1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 9, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 486
    Synonyms:
    substandard
  3. Using numbers or methods beyond those used in traditional analysis, often introducing new concepts like infinitesimals or hyperreal numbers in order to solve difficult problems.
    • A concise and simple exposition of nonstandard methods applied to delta functions and to other generalized functions.1990, R. F. Hoskins, Standard and Nonstandard Analysis, Fundamental Theory, Techniques, and Applications, page 230

See all 4 meanings of nonstandard

Forms of non-standard

comparativemore non-standard
superlativemost non-standard

Phrases with non-standard

Questions about non-standard

What is non-standard the alternative form of?
Non-standard is the alternative form of nonstandard.

Words near non-standard in the dictionary

  1. non-specific
  2. non-split
  3. non-squamous
  4. non-stack
  5. non-staffed
  6. non-standard
  7. non-standard varieties
  8. non-standard variety
  9. non-starchy
  10. non-stardom
  11. non-starter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: non-standard (page history and authors); nonstandard (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: “non-standard.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/non-standard. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.