Meaning of back-spelling | Babel Free

Definitions

An unetymological, often hypercorrect, spelling of a word created by analogy with other words which (usually through loss of a sound or its phonetic merger with other sounds) have become similar to it.

Examples

“Modern English numb is a back-spelling, because this word never had a /b/ in it. The back-spelling is based on words such as lamb, which had once ended in /b/, but where this sound⟳ was lost and the letter b became silent.”

“For example, in D and w, e is a possible reflex for OE y: (29) cysan, presumably a back-spelling for cesen < ceosen, and (40) hylle, a back-spelling for helle.”

“Another very important type⟳ is hypercorrect or inverse spelling (Rückschreibung, backspelling). Here a segment that has been lost or altered is spelled in the 'wrong' environment, suggesting that the writer knows that some words have⟳ it by convention, but not precisely which.”

“The absence of the epenthetic consonant in ⲖⲈⲬⲞⲨⲬⲞⲨⲘⲈⲢⲈ lekhukhumere seems to reflect⟳ a phenomenon of backspelling.”

CEFR level