hypocorrect

To undercorrect.

Adjective

  1. Not completely correct; nonstandard.
    • They produce hypocorrect forms in an effort to speak nonstandard black English. - 1988, Linguistic Society of America, Meeting Handbook, page 5:
    • Despite being second dialect learners, hypocorrect speakers are reinforcing linguistic divergence. - 1999, John Baugh, Out of the Mouths of Slaves, →ISBN:
    • This example also shows the combination of a hypocorrect construction with a “high” stylistic figure, that is, paronomasia (or figura etymologica—mafʿūl muțlaq). - 2013, Jonathan Owens, The Oxford Handbook of Arabic...

Origin

From hypo- + correct.

Forms

more hypocorrect most hypocorrect

Verb

  1. To undercorrect.
    • The surgeon can hypocorrect on the operating table, knowing that in the postoperative period an additional correction will result because of:... - 1989, Yves-Gerard Illouz, Yves T. De Villers, Emma Dankoski, Body...
    • Dillard (1977) and Baugh (19S7; 1992) have also shown that upper-middle class African American college students hypocorrect in their use of AAE phonology and grammar. - 1997, Working Papers in Linguistics - Volume 4,...
    • Similarly, the change bh>mh can be seen as a form of assimilation where listeners hypocorrect and misassign the nasality from a nasal segment to the labial fricative segment. - 2003, Ériu: Founded as the Journal of the...

Forms

hypocorrects hypocorrecting hypocorrected

Related

hypocorrection