suppletion

Fetched 2026-10-26 (cache).

Synonyms: suppletive, oppletion

Antonyms: suppletive, oppletion

Related words from Datamuse; suggestions, not definitions.

Noun

1. The [[supply]]ing of something lacking.
2. {{lb|en|linguistics|grammar}} 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. {{lb|en|grammar}} 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.

Source: Wiktionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wiktionary dump) · cached copy, not a rewrite.