autocorrect

English

Etymology

auto- +‎ correct

Verb

autocorrect (third-person singular simple present autocorrects, present participle autocorrecting, simple past and past participle autocorrected)

1. To make an autocorrection; to correct something automatically.
   • 2006 Joseph Reinhardt and Josien Pluim, "Medical imaging 2006", Part 3:

     In [16], motion-free MR brain (Figure 2a) image was corrupted with motion artifacts and the resulting image (Figure 2b) was autocorrected to fix the motion artifacts.

   • 2011, Jeff Allen, Get Laid Or Die Trying: The Field Reports, page 212:

     But the good news is that it autocorrects all of your subcommunications.

   • 2012, Margaret Mallet, The Primary English Encyclopedia, page 26:

     The computer usually defaults to autocorrecting certain spellings and capitalising first words of sentences.

   • 2016, Tim Carvell [et al.], “Encryption”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 3, episode 5, John Oliver (actor), Warner Bros. Television, via HBO:

     That is the angriest Lindsey Graham has been about a cellphone since his name got autocorrected to “Linty Grandma”. “Stupid phone! Luhn mah name, Ah am your bawss! Stupid! So duhmb!”.

Noun

autocorrect (countable and uncountable, plural autocorrects)

1. (computing) A software feature that attempts to correct presumed errors as soon as they are generated.
   • 2022 October 3, Dwitght Garner, “Anthony Bourdain’s New Biography: Light on Subtlety, Heavy on Grit”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     Anthony Bourdain would have hated that autocorrect turns his name into Boursin, a bland cheese with zero culinary credibility.

Translations

Translations

• Polish: autokorekta f
• Russian: автоисправление n (avtoispravlenije)
• Swedish: autokorrigering c

See also

• autocomplete
• Cupertino effect
• hypercorrection (linguistics)
• spell checker