reverse spelling
/ɹɪˈvɝs ˌspɛlɪŋ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.85 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A specific spelling of a word representing a phonetic feature never present in it, but present in other words in the same phonetic environment (and later lost); an inverse spelling.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Teaching assistants monitored accuracy of reverse spelling. Later in the session, students were asked to spell words in writing from each of the word sets practiced in the session."
- "He is perhaps better known for his grotesque tales which he published in a variety of Expressionist journals under the pseudonym Mynona, a reverse spelling of the German word for anonymous."
- "Reverse spelling is one example of the ability to reverse a sequential order that is difficult for persons with aphasia (language impairment) or other organic mental disorders (Bender, 1975). Reverse spelling has been incorporated into some screening measures for cognitive impairment (e.g. the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination, see chap. 3) and examined, in its own right, in relation to age."
- "The loss of ȝ between a front vowel and t, which Wyld finds in the middle of the fifteenth century but assigns to an earlier date,³⁵ is shown by both rhyme and spelling in knyght:whight (white) 562-63. The reverse spelling occurs again in whiȝte 566."
- "[…]several cases of reverse spelling of ae for /ē/, especially in accented syllable^([sic]), however, do show that a close pronunciation of the e from ae was possible, and the Romance languages do posit a close /ē/ for some words."
- "Beside ninety-odd correct ea spellings, Belfour IX has twelve plainly monophthongized and one reverse spelling, with a penumbra of phonetically special cases."
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Linguistics.