Word.ws English Dictionary

similect

similect noun: a variety of a language spoken by people who have a different first language, with features transferred from the first language in parallel by individual speakers rather than by a cohesive group.

Noun

similect (plural similects)

  1. A variety of a language spoken by people who have a different first language, with features transferred from the first language in parallel by individual speakers rather than by a cohesive group.
    • We cannot simply equate the L1-based lects with dialects, but could speak of them instead as ‘similects’, because they arise in parallel, not in mutual interaction. In short, there is no community of similect speakers. Similects do not develop new features or new discourse practices in the same way...2012, Anna Mauranen, Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-native Speakers, page 29

Forms of similect

pluralsimilects

Origin of similect

Coined by Anna Mauranen in a paper in 2012, from similar + -lect, modelled on dialect, etc.

Questions about similect

What does similect mean?
Similect means a variety of a language spoken by people who have a different first language, with features transferred from the first language in parallel by individual speakers rather than by a cohesive group.
What part of speech is similect?
Similect is a noun.
What is the plural of similect?
The plural of similect is similects.

Words near similect in the dictionary

  1. similative cases
  2. similatively
  3. similatives
  4. similativity
  5. simile
  6. similect
  7. similects
  8. similes
  9. similia
  10. similiar
  11. Similien

Source and license

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