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exocentric

American

[ek-soh-sen-trik] / ˌɛk soʊˈsɛn trɪk /

adjective

Grammar.

not having the same syntactic function in the sentence as any one of its immediate constituents. In the garden is an exocentric construction, since it does not function in the same way as the noun garden. The noun bittersweet is an exocentric compound, since it is a noun but its elements are both adjectives.

exocentric British

/ ˌɛksəʊˈsɛntrɪk /

adjective

grammar (of a construction) not fulfilling the grammatical role of any of its constituents; as in until last Easter, where the constituents are prepositional, adjectival, and nominal, while the whole construction is adverbial Compare endocentric

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of exocentric

First recorded in 1910–15; exo- + -centric

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023