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exocentric

[ek-soh-sen-trik]
adjective Grammar.
  1. not having the same syntactic function in the sentence as any one of its immediate constituents. In the garden is an exocentric construction, since it does not function in the same way as the noun garden. The noun bittersweet is an exocentric compound, since it is a noun but its elements are both adjectives.
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Compare endocentric.

Origin of exocentric

First recorded in 1910–15; exo- + -centric
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
British Dictionary definitions for exocentric

exocentric

adjective
  1. grammar (of a construction) not fulfilling the grammatical role of any of its constituents; as in until last Easter, where the constituents are prepositional, adjectival, and nominal, while the whole construction is adverbialCompare endocentric
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012