heteroclitic

Meanings

Plural: heteroclitics

Adj

• Irregular in inflection.
• Signifying a stem which alternates between more than one form when declined for grammatical case, particularly in the suffix, most often between *-r- in the strong stem and *-n- in the weak stem(s). Examples of heteroclitic noun stems in Proto-Indo-European include *wod-r/n- (“water”) (nominoaccusative *wódr̥; genitive *udnés; locative *udén) and *yékʷ-r/n- (“liver”) (nominoaccusative *yékʷr̥, genitive *ikʷnés).
• Pertaining to antibodies that react to a wide variety of antigens.

Noun

• A heteroclitic noun.

Related Words

heteroclisis, heteroclite, heteroclitical