advergence
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The main process in regiolect formation is dialect-to-standard advergence, but there are two caveats to this statement."
- "Horizontal convergence that causes divergence in a part of a formerly uniform dialect area can be, and often is, accompanied by vertical convergence, i.e., by advergence to the standard language."
Etymology
Coined by evolutionary biologists L. P. Brower and J. van Z. Brower in 1972 for the paper "Parallelism, convergence, divergence, and the new concept of advergence in the evolution of mimicry" on the pattern of convergence, substituting ad- for con- to emphasize the one-sidedness of the approach. Borrowed into linguistics by Peter Auer in 1998. By surface analysis, ad- + verge + -ence, from Latin vergere (“to turn, incline”), from Proto-Italic *wergō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wérg-e-ti, from *h₂werg- (“to turn”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: vergō, *wergō