counterexpectational
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From counter- + expectational.
Adjective
[edit]counterexpectational (comparative more counterexpectational, superlative most counterexpectational)
- (chiefly linguistics) That goes against expectations; unexpected.
- 2018, John H. McWhorter, The Creole Debate, Cambridge University Press, page 18:
- For example, in Saramaccan, property items can be reduplicated to encode counterexpectational semantics.