Metathesizing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Shifting the order of sounds or letters within a word across its history so that they swap places with one another
2. Undergoing a gradual change in which neighboring sounds or letters trade positions within a word over successive generations
3. Rearranging the sequence of phonemes in a word through a process of transposition that alters its form over time

Etymology: Metathesis comes from Greek "metathesis", meaning "transposition" or "placing differently", built from "meta" (change, across) and "tithenai" (to place). In linguistics it names the swapping of sounds or letters within a word, as when "aks" became "ask" in English. The verb formed from it adds the suffix "-ize", which the English language took through Middle French and Late Latin from the Greek "-izein", a suffix used to turn nouns and adjectives into verbs meaning "to make into" or "to treat in the manner of." So the verb describes the act of undergoing or causing that transposition. Its root is the same as the noun's, and the chain of borrowing behind the suffix explains why the ending looks so different from the Greek original of "metathesis" itself.

Synonyms: transposing, interchanging