heteroclite
Definitions
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- adjective In grammar, irregular in inflection. Hence, deviating from ordinary forms or rules; irregular; anomalous.
- noun In grammar, a word which is irregular or anomalous in declension or conjugation, or which deviates from the ordinary forms of inflection in words of a like kind. It is applied particularly to nouns having forms from different stems.
- noun A person or thing that deviates from the regular or proper form.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- noun A word whose etymological roots come from distinct, different languages or language groups.
Examples
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Nicolas Sarkozy, French to his fingertips despite his heteroclite background two parts Hungarian, one part Greek/Jewish and one part French/French, seems to have absorbed the first, but not the second, of the above two maxims.
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Over the years Amis has learned how to notate a superbly comic speaking voice; getting it down on paper is comparable to a good composer's skill in scoring heteroclite sounds never before made by concert instruments.
Martin Amis's 'The Pregnant Widow' Is A 'Strange, Sparkling Novel' (New York Review)
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That makes the in-color onlooker the heteroclite, and the urbane aesthetic cellist the metroclite.
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These instances might with propriety be reckoned among singular or heteroclite instances, for in the whole extent of nature they are of rare and extraordinary occurrence.
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Nor could I have dreamed the heteroclite crewmen I had met aboard Tzadkiel's ship, nor the jibers; and yet both had come from Briah, even as I; and Tzadkiel had not scrupled to take them into his service.
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But even where he walked, amid a society intellectually fostering sentiment, in a land bowing to see the simplicity of the mystery paraded, Alvan's behaviour was passing heteroclite.
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On the other hand, the heteroclite array of the dancers of the night before, torn from their slumbers, appeared in fantastic and ridiculous outline like the shades of a magic lantern; shawls, rugs, and even bed-quilts wrapped around them.
Note
The word 'heteroclite' comes ultimately from a Greek word meaning 'to bend, incline'.
