Meanings
- not comparablehuman sciencesPertaining to phonotactics.
The term missy appears to be a Chinese Pidgin English term from English miss + the Cantonese phonotactic suffix -ee/-y[.]
2015, James Lambert, “Lexicography as a teaching tool: A Hong Kong case study”, in Lan Li, Jamie McKeown, Liming Liu, editors, Dictionaries and corpora: Innovations in reference science. Proceedings of ASIALEX 2015 Hong Kong, Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, page 1461 more example
So, we all have intuitions about possible and impossible stress patterns in sentences. Moreover, we all have strong phonotactic intuitions – i.e. intuitions about what are possible and impossible sound sequences among native words in English. For instance, we'd probably all agree that blick is a possible, but non-occurring English word, whereas *bnick by contrast is not a possible native English word[.]
1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational Grammar, Cambridge: University Press, →ISBN, pages 4–5Synonyms: phonotactical
- not comparablePertaining to phonotaxis.
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectivePertaining to phonotactics.
Translations
Indonesian bertata bunyi, fonotaktis
- bertata bunyipertaining to phonotactics
- fonotaktispertaining to phonotactics
Polish fonotaktyczny
- fonotaktycznypertaining to phonotactics
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with phonotactic
Cite this entry
phonotactic. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/phonotactic
“phonotactic.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/phonotactic. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “phonotactic,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/phonotactic.
Source: phonotactic on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.