hypercorrect

adj

Etymology

Back-formation from hypercorrection, equivalent to hyper- + correct.

  1. derived from correctus
  2. derived from correcter
  3. inherited from correcten
  4. prefixed as hypercorrect — “hyper + correct

Definitions

  1. Nonstandard because of a mistaken idea of standard usage.

  2. To change (a word or phrase) to a nonstandard form, or to another option among a set of…

    To change (a word or phrase) to a nonstandard form, or to another option among a set of accepted alternative-form options, in the mistaken belief that the form used was wrong.

    • I use reduplicate to mean "redouble," though both words should mean "quadruple," but English is funny that way, so hold off on the hypercorrecting "gotcha!"
  3. To correct excessively.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for hypercorrect. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA