Back-spelling

Quick meaning: Back-spelling is a noun meaning An unetymological, often hypercorrect, spelling of a word created by analogy with other words which (usually through loss of a sound or its phonetic merger with other sounds) have become similar to it.

Meaning

An unetymological, often hypercorrect, spelling of a word created by analogy with other words which (usually through loss of a sound or its phonetic merger with other sounds) have become similar to it.

Example Sentences

The absence of the epenthetic consonant in ⲖⲈⲬⲞⲨⲬⲞⲨⲘⲈⲢⲈ lekhukhumere seems to reflect a phenomenon of backspelling.

For example, in D and w, e is a possible reflex for OE y: (29) cysan, presumably a back-spelling for cesen < ceosen, and (40) hylle, a back-spelling for helle.

Modern English numb is a back-spelling, because this word never had a /b/ in it. The back-spelling is based on words such as lamb, which had once ended in /b/, but where this sound was lost and the letter b became silent.

Another very important type is hypercorrect or inverse spelling (Rückschreibung, backspelling). Here a segment that has been lost or altered is spelled in the 'wrong' environment, suggesting that the writer knows that some words have it by convention, but not precisely which.

Word Forms

• backspelling

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include respelling, spelling, fingerspelling, cacography, orthography, backspace.

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