Metalinguistic
adj
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Adjective
- 1 Treating words as words, rather than interacting with their meaning. not-comparable
"Mary is still one of the most popular girl's names. This represents a metalinguistic use of Mary: the case where we cite a linguistic expression in order to say something about it qua linguistic expression."
- 2 Pertaining to metalinguistics. not-comparable
Example
More examples"Mary is still one of the most popular girl's names. This represents a metalinguistic use of Mary: the case where we cite a linguistic expression in order to say something about it qua linguistic expression."
Etymology
From meta- + linguistic.
More for "metalinguistic"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.