Words · Rare
clitic
6 letters · 4 distinct letters
- noun
a word that is treated in pronunciation as forming a part of a neighboring word and that is often unaccented or contracted.
Most languages can adopt theme rheme structure idiosyncratically, as for English, we often use as for theme constructions, but topic prominent languages use systematic changes in syntax or even dedicated morpological elements such as the Japanese clitic particle ‘-wa’ to mark themes and to set them apart from rhemes.
Word history
From Ancient Greek κλιτικός (klitikós, “inflexional”).
From Wiktionary, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0
Why this word counts
- Where it comes from
- From the ENABLE word list, a public domain list made for word games.
- How common it is
- Rarer than once in ten million words.
- In the spelling bee
- Bonus word The ENABLE list is generous with rare words, so words found only there score as bonus words.