hypocorrect

English

Etymology

Adjective

hypocorrect (comparative more hypocorrect, superlative most hypocorrect)

(grammar) Not completely correct; nonstandard.
- 1988, Linguistic Society of America, Meeting Handbook, page 5:
  They produce hypocorrect forms in an effort to speak nonstandard black English.
- 1999, John Baugh, Out of the Mouths of Slaves, →ISBN:
  Despite being second dialect learners, hypocorrect speakers are reinforcing linguistic divergence.
- 2013, Jonathan Owens, The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, →ISBN, page 180:
  This example also shows the combination of a hypocorrect construction with a “high” stylistic figure, that is, paronomasia (or figura etymologica—mafʿūl muțlaq).

Verb

hypocorrect (third-person singular simple present hypocorrects, present participle hypocorrecting, simple past and past participle hypocorrected)

To undercorrect.
- 1989, Yves-Gerard Illouz, Yves T. De Villers, Emma Dankoski, Body sculpturing by lipoplasty, →ISBN, page 417:
  The surgeon can hypocorrect on the operating table, knowing that in the postoperative period an additional correction will result because of:...
- 1997, Working Papers in Linguistics - Volume 4, page 337:
  Dillard (1977) and Baugh (19S7; 1992) have also shown that upper-middle class African American college students hypocorrect in their use of AAE phonology and grammar.
- 2003, Ériu: Founded as the Journal of the School of Irish Learning Devoted to Irish Philology and Literature, page 128:
  Similarly, the change bh>mh can be seen as a form of assimilation where listeners hypocorrect and misassign the nasality from a nasal segment to the labial fricative segment.