Enallage

//ɛˈnæləd͡ʒiː// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Transformation from one grammatically correct form to another. countable, rhetoric, uncountable
  2. 2
    a substitution of part of speech or gender or number or tense etc. (e.g., editorial ‘we’ for ‘I’) wordnet
  3. 3
    The substitution of one grammatical form for another that violates a grammatical rule. countable, rhetoric, uncountable

    "And when all men shall have adopted this enallage, the fault indeed will be banished, or metamorphosed, but with it will go an other sixth part of every English conjugation."

Example

More examples

"And when all men shall have adopted this enallage, the fault indeed will be banished, or metamorphosed, but with it will go an other sixth part of every English conjugation."

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ἐναλλαγή (enallagḗ, “interchange, variation”).

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