noun
- reanalysis of a word or phrase that results in a change in its structure or meaning, often creating new words through misinterpretation of morpheme boundaries
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- The word ‘hamburger’ underwent metanalysis, leading people to create ‘cheeseburger’ even though ‘ham’ has nothing to do with the original meaning.
- Through metanalysis, ‘a napron’ became ‘an apron’ in Middle English.
- The phrase ‘an ewt’ was reinterpreted through metanalysis as ‘a newt’.
- Metanalysis explains how ‘orange’ lost its initial ‘n’ when ‘a norange’ became ‘an orange’.
- The linguistic process of metanalysis has created many modern English words.
- Students of historical linguistics study metanalysis to understand language change.