This week’s theme
Words about words and language

This week’s words
endonym
basilect
metonymy
homeoteleuton
heterophemy

This week’s comments
AWADmail 955

Next week’s theme
Words that appear to be coined after presidential candidates

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(HET-uh-ruh-fee-mee)

MEANING:

noun: The use of a word different from the one intended.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek hetero- (different) + pheme (speaking). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bha- (to speak), which also gave us fable, fairy, fate, fame, blame, confess, and infant (literally, one unable to speak), apophasis (allusion to something by denying it will be said), confabulate, and ineffable. Earliest documented use: 1875.

USAGE:

“In effect, Hyacinth’s nervousness results in a classic case of heterophemy: his disrupted mental condition leads him ‘to speak without thinking’.”
Gavin Jones; Strange Talk; University of California Press; 1999.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: