Metathesized

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Had its sounds or letters switched around in position within a word over time ; had the bonding partners of a chemical compound swapped with those of another compound
2. Underwent a shift in which the order of sounds or letters within a word was reversed ; underwent a reaction in which atoms or groups traded places between molecules
3. Was altered by the transposition of phonemes or letters in a word's form ; was changed by a double decomposition in which molecular fragments exchanged partners

Etymology: Metathesis is the Greek term for transposing sounds or letters, so "metathesized" is simply the past tense of a verb built by attaching the suffix "-ize" to it. The base noun came from Greek "metathesis", meaning "transposition", formed from "meta-" ("change" or "after") and "tithenai" ("to place"), so it literally means placing something differently. The verb's suffix has a longer pedigree: it comes from the Greek "-izein", which passed through Late Latin "-izare" and Middle French "-iser" before reaching English as "-ize". Linguists use the verb to describe a specific change in which two sounds swap positions, as when "wasp" was once "wapse" in Old English. English speakers have used "metathesize" in this technical sense, with the suffix turning the noun into an action that a language can undergo. Because the verb is a learned formation, its ancestors are Greek and Latin rather than the older Germanic vocabulary of English.

Synonyms: transpose, interchange