heteroclitic

From hetero- +‎ clitic.

heteroclitic (comparative more heteroclitic, superlative most heteroclitic)

1. (linguistics) Irregular in inflection.
2. (Indo-European studies) Signifying a stem which alternates between more than one form when declined for grammatical case, particularly in the suffix, most often between *-r- in the strong stem and *-n- in the weak stem(s). Examples of heteroclitic noun stems in Proto-Indo-European include *wod-r/n- (“water”) (nominoaccusative *wódr̥; genitive *udnés; locative *udén) and *yék^w-r/n- (“liver”) (nominoaccusative *yék^wr̥, genitive *ik^wnés).
3. (microbiology) Pertaining to antibodies that react to a wide variety of antigens.
   • 2011, Eric J. Toone, Advances in Enzymology and Related Areas of Molecular Biology, page 300:

     […] a heteroclitic response was never observed after the immunization with the deamidated peptide […]

• suppletive

• heteroclite
• heteroclitical

heteroclitic (plural heteroclitics)

1. A heteroclitic noun.

• heteroclisis
• heteroclite