Dislexification

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The linguistic pattern whereby a given language must encode separate meanings using separate words, as opposed to colexifying them with a single polysemous word. countable, uncountable

    "This pattern of dislexification {arm ≠ hand} has been preserved intact in modern Romance languages, all of which contrast ‘arm’ vs. ‘hand’."

Synonyms

All synonyms
distinctiondistinguo

Example

More examples

"This pattern of dislexification {arm ≠ hand} has been preserved intact in modern Romance languages, all of which contrast ‘arm’ vs. ‘hand’."

Etymology

By surface analysis, dis- + lexi- + -ification.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.