Contextualizebeta

suppletion

noun
/səˈpliːʃən/

Etymology

From German Suppletivwesen, from Latin supplēre (“to supply”), perfect stem supplet-, + -ion.

  1. derived from supplēre — “to supply”
  2. derived from Suppletivwesen

Definitions

  1. The supplying of something lacking.

  2. The use of an unrelated word or phrase to supply inflected forms otherwise lacking, e.g.…

    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”.

  3. More loosely, the use of unrelated (or distantly related) words for semantically related…

    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.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for suppletion. 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