Avledet

Avledet is a term used in linguistics to describe a word form that has been created from a base word through derivational processes. It is commonly used to distinguish derived words from inflected forms, which mainly signal grammatical category rather than introduce new meaning. In Scandinavian grammars, avledet words can belong to nouns, adjectives, or verbs, and they are formed by adding affixes or by other derivational mechanisms that change part of speech or semantic scope.

Etymology-wise, the word stems from the combination of a prefix meaning away from or off and a verb meaning to lead or to make, reflecting the idea of forming a new word from an existing base. In practice, avledet describes the relationship between the base and the new word, rather than a specific lexical item.

Usage in grammars and dictionaries often involves labeling words as avledet to indicate their derivational origin. This helps distinguish them from simple inflections of the same lemma. Derivational morphology may use various affixes, or sometimes internal changes, to create the new word form and its related meaning or syntactic role.

Examples of avledet forms illustrate how meaning and function can shift through derivation, producing nouns, adjectives, or verbs that extend or modify the sense of the base word. These forms typically carry distinct semantics compared with the base and participate in different syntactic constructions.

See also: Derivation (linguistics), Affix, Morpheme, Lexicon.