Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A construction or pronunciation produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage out of a desire to be correct, as in the substitution of I for me in on behalf of my parents and I.
- noun The production of such a construction or pronunciation.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun linguistics The use of a
nonstandard form due to a belief that it is moreformal or morecorrect than the corresponding standard form. - noun linguistics A nonstandard form so used.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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But stablishment seems to be a case of hypercorrection that removes an e that really should be there.
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Reading through a column about hypercorrection by Paul Mulshine, I was struck by one supposed example of hypercorrection, the use of whomever for whoever:
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Michelle Dulak Thomson: Oh, the “who/whom” business is absolutely hypercorrection.
The Volokh Conspiracy » It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Cover-Up — Sestak Edition 2010
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Spanish hypercorrection of a loanword:
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Peter Harvey, linguist: Spanish hypercorrection of a loanword
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Oh, the “who/whom” business is absolutely hypercorrection.
The Volokh Conspiracy » It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Cover-Up — Sestak Edition 2010
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If the usage was ‘very frequent’ 400 years ago, hypercorrection cannot really be the whole reason for its use nowadays.
Between you and ? 2009
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If the usage was ‘very frequent’ 400 years ago, hypercorrection cannot really be the whole reason for its use nowadays.
Between you and ? 2009
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But stablishment seems to be a case of hypercorrection that removes an e that really should be there.
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But stablishment seems to be a case of hypercorrection that removes an e that really should be there.
pterodactyl commented on the word hypercorrection
I just came across an interesting sentence in an article I was reading:
"The problem with library data are that it is not as robust as other data to which users have become accustomed."
Would this be an example of hypercorrection?
A lot of people instinctually write "the data is", rather than "the data are". If you're one of those people, and if you think that "the data is" is incorrect, you have to train yourself to replace every instance of "the data is" with "the data are".
In this case, though, that automatic replacement rule gets it wrong, because the singular "is" that you're replacing actually refers to the singular noun "problem". If you want to treat "data" as a plural, it'd be better to write "The problem with library data is that they are not as robust..."
Or, you could just do as I do and treat "data" as a singular mass noun.
April 19, 2011
ruzuzu commented on the word hypercorrection
I find myself imagining Library Data as an android that shooshes people on the starship Enterprise.
July 17, 2012