1. relating to or being a form of a word that supplies a missing inflection from a different root
Usage: linguistics; grammar

Examples

• The verb ‘go’ has a suppletive past tense ‘went’ from a different root.
• English uses suppletive forms like ‘better’ as the comparative of ‘good’.
• The suppletive relationship between ‘be’ and ‘was’ is common in many languages.
• Linguists study suppletive patterns across different language families.
• The word ‘worst’ is a suppletive superlative form of ‘bad’.
• Suppletive morphology occurs when regular inflection patterns are replaced by unrelated forms.