Word.ws English Dictionary

wotacism

wotacism is the rare form of rhotacism.

Meaning of rhotacism

Noun

rhotacism (countable and uncountable, plural rhotacisms)

  1. An exaggerated use of the sound of the letter R.
  2. (countable) A linguistic phenomenon in which a consonant changes into an R; rhotacization.
  3. The inability to pronounce the letter R; derhotacization.
    • For example: r’s may become burrs or guttural grunts or w’s or l’s (rhotacism); […]1970, Leland E. Hinsie, Robert Jean Campbell, Psychiatric Dictionary, Oxford University Press, page 711

Origin of wotacism

A spelling of rhotacism as it would be pronounced by a person who has the condition.

Questions about wotacism

What is wotacism the rare form of?
Wotacism is the rare form of rhotacism.

Words near wotacism in the dictionary

  1. wossname
  2. wossnames
  3. Wossy
  4. wost
  5. wot
  6. wotacism
  7. wotagei
  8. Wotan
  9. Wotanism
  10. WOTC
  11. wotcha

Source and license

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