polysynthetic

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   linguistics: describing a language or word structure in which single words typically contain many morphemes and can express sentence-like meanings

   In the polysynthetic language, one complex verb can encode the subject, object, direction, and manner of an action.

2. 2
   adj

   crystallography: showing repeated thin layers produced by multiple twinning

   The feldspar displayed polysynthetic twinning as parallel bands under the microscope.

From Late Greek polysynthetos ("much compounded"), built from poly- ("many") + synthetos ("put together"), with English -ic. Linguistics adopted the term for languages with highly complex, many-morpheme words.

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