polysynthetic

US:USA pronunciation: respellingUSA pronunciation: respelling(pol′ē sin thet′ik)


WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025
pol•y•syn•thet•ic  (pol′ē sin thet′ik),USA pronunciation adj. 
  1. Linguistics(of a language) characterized by a prevalence of relatively long words containing a large number of affixes to express syntactic relationships and meanings. Many American Indian languages are polysynthetic. Cf. analytic (def. 3), synthetic (def. 3).
  2. of or pertaining to polysynthesism.
Also, pol′y•syn•thet′i•cal. 
  • Late Greek polysýnthet(os) much compounded + -ic. See poly-, synthetic
  • 1795–1805

'polysynthetic' also found in these entries (note: many are not synonyms or translations):
analytic - holophrastic - synthetic

Forum discussions with the word(s) "polysynthetic" in the title:


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