The process of making or becoming dissimilar; in linguistics, the change of similar sounds in a word to make them more different.
From Latin dissimilatio, formed from dissimilare with the -tion suffix. This noun describes the process or result of the verb dissimilate. In linguistics, it became a technical term for a specific phonetic process.
Dissimilation explains why 'squirrel' sounds nothing like its French cousin 'écureuil' (literally 'squirrel')—English speakers changed the middle sounds to be less alike, a natural phonetic tendency that shapes how languages evolve.
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