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Bahuvrihi




The term "bahuvrihi" was first used by Sanskrit grammarians, and is a specific .

Other examples of English bahuvrihis are "flatfoot", "half-wit", "highbrow", "lowlife", "redhead", "tenderfoot", "longlegs", "cutthroat", and "white-collar".

A bahuvrihi is otherwise known as an "exocentric" compound, since its core semantic value is subsumed by an elliptical or `external' semantic value. Thus, the compound is not a Hyponym of the head (e.g. "dinnertable" is not a bahuvrihi because it a kind of table and "table" is the head of the compound).


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