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The definitive reference guide to 52 English linguistic phenomena, morphological oddities, semantic shifts, and literary figures of speech.
Showing 52 phenomena
Reduplication in which the vowel changes, as in zigzag or flip-flop.
An abbreviation formed from initial letters or parts and pronounced as a word.
Words whose letters occur in strict ascending alphabetical order from start to finish.
A design that can be read as a word or symbol in more than one orientation or transformation.
A word or phrase made by rearranging the letters of another, using the same letter inventory.
A name or word formed by reversing another name or word.
A person's name that is considered especially fitting for their occupation or characteristic.
A word that has a property it describes, under a specified definition.
The creation of a new word by removing a real or imagined affix from an existing word, as edit from editor.
An expression translated piece by piece from another language, reproducing its structure or components.
A word whose meaning or pronunciation changes when its initial letter is capitalised.
A word with two senses that are opposite or contradictory in a relevant respect.
A bound element that occurs in only one or a few words and has little or no independent meaning, such as cran- in cranberry.
A word for a person from a particular place.
One of two words in the same language that descend from the same source but developed different forms, often through different routes.
A plausible but mistaken reanalysis of a word or phrase that preserves or reshapes its meaning, such as acorn for eggcorn as a label for the phenomenon.
A word or name derived from a person's or other named entity's name.
A word or form preserved mainly in a fixed expression or narrow context.
A word that appears in a source through error or misunderstanding and has no genuine independent use in the sense claimed.
A form recorded only once in a specified text or corpus.
A homograph whose different meanings have different pronunciations.
A word written the same as another word, whether or not pronunciation and meaning match.
A word that sounds the same as another word in a relevant pronunciation variety, regardless of spelling or meaning.
Words written in capital letters with horizontal line reflection symmetry (B, C, D, E, H, I, K, O, X).
An abbreviation pronounced as a sequence of letter names.
A word or phrase in which no letter is repeated, under the chosen treatment of case and spaces.
A word that contains, in order, the letters of a shorter word with a related meaning.
A word adopted from one language into another.
The mistaken use of a word that sounds similar to the intended word but has a different meaning.
A newly coined word or a newly established use of an existing word.
A number-based abbreviation or word form, often using numbers to represent letters or omitted material.
A word whose form imitates or evokes a sound, such as buzz or clang.
A sequence that reads the same forwards and backwards under a stated convention.
A word related to another by resemblance in form or sound, often liable to confusion.
A blend formed by combining parts of two or more words, such as brunch.
The repetition of all or part of a word or stem to express a grammatical or lexical meaning.
A new term created to distinguish an older form after a newer form makes the old name ambiguous, such as acoustic guitar.
Words whose letters occur in strict descending alphabetical order from start to finish.
A verb expressing the reversal or undoing of an action, such as tie/untie.
A reduplicative form whose parts rhyme, as in lovey-dovey.
A word or phrase that becomes a different valid word or phrase when reversed.
A word composed of two identical halves or duplicated morphemes (such as couscous, beriberi, or murmur).
Restricted to using only one vowel letter or vowel type, according to the stated convention.
A word that lacks an expected counterpart in a particular grammatical or semantic pattern.
Words written in capital letters with vertical line reflection symmetry (A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, Y).
Authentic English words spelled without traditional vowels (A, E, I, O, U), using consonants and semi-vowels.
Brand names used generically for a class of products; whether a mark has become generic is jurisdiction-specific and needs legal review.
Fossil words or forms mainly preserved in fixed expressions.
Words containing two or more adjacent pairs of identical letters, such as the pattern in bookkeeper.
Words containing uncommon sequences of letters in the relevant language.
Words containing written letters that are not pronounced in the relevant variety.
Words with few or no common perfect rhymes in a particular pronunciation variety.