Hyperforeign
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Resulting from the misapplication of foreign reading rules, such as dropping the ‘t’ in claret. not-comparable
"This relation is further complicated by the literate persons who know something of the foreign pronunciation and orthography. A speaker who knows the spelling jabot and the English form [ˈžɛbow] (for French [žabo]), may revise tête-à-tête [ˈtejteˌtejt] (from French [tɛ:t a tɛːt]) to a hyper-foreign ['tejtetej], without the final [t]."
Example
More examples"This relation is further complicated by the literate persons who know something of the foreign pronunciation and orthography. A speaker who knows the spelling jabot and the English form [ˈžɛbow] (for French [žabo]), may revise tête-à-tête [ˈtejteˌtejt] (from French [tɛ:t a tɛːt]) to a hyper-foreign ['tejtetej], without the final [t]."
Etymology
First use appears c. 1933 as hyper-foreign, and c. 1983 as hyperforeign. From hyper- + foreign. Compare hypercorrect and hypercorrection.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.