Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun linguistics A unit of text that respects the phonotactic restrictions of a language, but is not part of the lexicon

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From pseudo- +‎ word

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word pseudoword.

Examples

  • Listening to the conversation, I thought I'd comment on previously noted uses of the pseudoword "incent" or other grammatical errors, but I find myself fuming about the implication that as we baby-boomers retire, you will somehow be better able to remake teaching once we get out of your way … let's hope there's at least one baby-boomer left in each building to correct their grammar.

    WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook 2009

  • Word and pseudoword naming responses primed by words with non-dominant stress - which require whole-word knowledge to be read correctly - were compared to those primed by nonwords.

    Elites TV 2009

  • An experiment with “pseudowords” - words that researchers made up like clisious, smanious, drikious - suggested that people were most likely to remember the words they considered the most beautiful.

    Britain's accidental massive week for language rights Sophia Smith Galer 2025

Comments

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