Suppletion

Quick meaning: Suppletion is a noun meaning The supplying of something lacking.

Meaning

The supplying of something lacking.

More Meanings

1. (linguistics, grammar) The use of an unrelated word or phrase to supply inflected forms otherwise lacking, e.g. using “to be able” as the infinitive of “can”, or “better” as the comparative of “good”, or “went” as the simple past of “go”.
2. (grammar) More loosely, the use of unrelated (or distantly related) words for semantically related words which may not share the same lexical category, such as father/paternal or cow/bovine, normally referred to as collateral adjectives.

Word Forms

• suppletions

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include suppletory, supplial, substitution, suppl, supplyment, supplementation.

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