hypercorrect

• hyper-correct

Back-formation from hypercorrection, equivalent to hyper- +‎ correct.

hypercorrect (comparative more hypercorrect, superlative most hypercorrect)

1. (linguistics) Nonstandard because of a mistaken idea of standard usage.

hypercorrect (third-person singular simple present hypercorrects, present participle hypercorrecting, simple past and past participle hypercorrected)

1. (transitive, linguistics) To change (a word or phrase) to a nonstandard form in the mistaken belief that it is standard usage.
   • 2007 October 28, William Safire, “And Now This”, in The New York Times‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-11-26:

     I use reduplicate to mean "redouble," though both words should mean "quadruple," but English is funny that way, so hold off on the hypercorrecting "gotcha!"

2. (transitive, rare) To correct excessively.
   • 2012, Benjamin Maria Baader, Sharon Gillerman, Paul Lerner, editors, Jewish Masculinities: German Jews, Gender, and History, Bloomington, I.N., Indianapolis, I.N.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 163:

     Likewise, both the chapcha that accompanies the modern Hebrew handshake and the explicit demand to shake hands like a "male" stem from the need to overcompensate (or hypercorrect) for the effeminacy, passivity, feebleness, and bodily unfitness so often ascribed to Jews by other Europeans (especially by Germans) in the nineteenth century.

   • 2016 March 7, Samantha Allen, “'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' Is Smashing Stereotypes of Male Bisexuality, One '80s Jam at a Time”, in The Daily Beast‎, archived from the original on 2022-07-04:

     But their different life stages also provide the writers with much-needed fuel for conflict. It would be tempting to hypercorrect for the negative media representation of bisexuals by making Darryl infallible, but it's more helpful for the show to simply treat him as human. And that's exactly what McKenna and crew have been so careful to do.

   • 2017, Emmy J. Favilla, A World Without "Whom": The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age, London […]: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 191:

     Let everything stand as it was tweeted or posted. We're not fooling anyone by pretending that people don't make typos, that they always know how to spell things correctly, or that they care about standard capitalization rules, and a reader will always be able to find the original tweet (if not least because it's been linked or embedded in the post in which it was quoted), and efforts to hypercorrect can appear silly or stodgy.

• “hypercorrect”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “hypercorrect, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “hypercorrect”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “hypercorrect”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “hypercorrect” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.

• ^{(mute h)} IPA^(key): /i.pɛʁ.kɔ.ʁɛkt/

• Audio

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hypercorrect (feminine hypercorrecte, masculine plural hypercorrects, feminine plural hypercorrectes)

1. hypercorrect

• hypercorrection
• hypercorriger

• “hypercorrect”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.