Back-formation fromhypercorrection, equivalent tohyper- +correct.
hypercorrect (comparativemorehypercorrect,superlativemosthypercorrect)
- (linguistics)Nonstandard because of amistakenidea ofstandardusage.
nonstandard because of a mistaken idea of standard usage
hypercorrect (third-person singular simple presenthypercorrects,present participlehypercorrecting,simple past and past participlehypercorrected)
- (transitive, linguistics) To change (aword orphrase) to anonstandard form in the mistaken belief that it isstandard usage.
2007 October 28,William Safire, “And Now This”, inThe New York Times Magazine[1], New York, N.Y.:The New York Times Company,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe original on26 November 2022:I usereduplicate to mean "redouble," though both words should mean "quadruple," but English is funny that way, so hold off on thehypercorrecting "gotcha!"
- (transitive, rare) Tocorrect 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,page163:Likewise, both thechapcha that accompanies the modern Hebrew handshake and the explicit demand to shake hands like a "male" stem from the need to overcompensate (orhypercorrect) 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”, inThe Daily Beast[2], archived fromthe original on4 July 2022:But their different life stages also provide the writers with much-needed fuel for conflict. It would be tempting tohypercorrect 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,page191: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 tohypercorrect can appear silly or stodgy.
- “hypercorrect”, inCollins English Dictionary.
- “hypercorrect,adj.”, inLexico,Dictionary.com;Oxford University Press,2019–2022.
- “hypercorrect”, inOneLook Dictionary Search.
- “hypercorrect”, inMerriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.:Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “hypercorrect”, inTheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc.,2003–2025
hypercorrect (femininehypercorrecte,masculine pluralhypercorrects,feminine pluralhypercorrectes)
- hypercorrect
