metathesis

Other forms of metathesis

plural

metatheses

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about metathesis

What does metathesis mean?

metathesis means "a linguistic process of transposition of sounds or syllables within a word or words within a sentence". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in metathesis?

metathesis has 4 syllables: me-ta-the-sis. The stress falls on "ta".

What is another word for metathesis?

Close synonyms include double decomposition, double decomposition reaction. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is metathesis a common word?

metathesis is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.