heteroclitic

English

Etymology

From hetero- +‎ clitic.

Pronunciation

Adjective

heteroclitic (comparative more heteroclitic, superlative most heteroclitic)

  1. (linguistics) Irregular in inflection.
  2. (Indo-European studies) Signifying a nominal stem which alternates between more than one form when declined for grammatical case, particularly in the suffix (such as between *-r̥- in the strong stem and *-n̥- in the weak stem).
    The Proto-Indo-European term *wódr̥ (“water”) is typical of nouns with heteroclitic stems: the strong stem *wódr̥- occurs in the direct cases while the weak stem *wédn̥- is found instead in the oblique cases, hence the contrast between nominative *wódr̥ and genitive *wédn̥s.
  3. (microbiology) Pertaining to antibodies that react to a wide variety of antigens.
    • 2011, Eric J. Toone, Advances in Enzymology and Related Areas of Molecular Biology, page 300:
      […] a heteroclitic response was never observed after the immunization with the deamidated peptide […]

Coordinate terms

Translations

Noun

heteroclitic (plural heteroclitics)

  1. A heteroclitic noun.
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