Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to a group of syntactically related words, none of which is functionally equivalent to the function of the whole group. For example, none of the words in the phrase on the table is an adverb, yet they combine to form a phrase having adverbial function.
- adjective Of or relating to a compound word whose referent is not the same as the referents of any of its constituent parts. For example, the noun razorback does not refer to a type of back, but to a type of hog (one having a sharply ridged back).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective linguistics Not having the same
part of speech as any of itsconstituent words .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective not fulfilling the same grammatical role of any of its constituents
Etymologies
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Examples
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Broccoli would first meet the exocentric billionaire, Howard Hughes, who was financing the picture.
MI6 :: 007 News 2009
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Diachronic versus synchronic approaches vied with endocentric versus exocentric to confound the neophyte.
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fn1. e.g. here - the transition from egocentric to exocentric in population sense as display shrinks.
Size Zounts 2006
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fn1. e.g. here - the transition from egocentric to exocentric in population sense as display shrinks.
July 2006 2006
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