Quirkian

English

Etymology

From Quirk +‎ -ian.

Adjective

Quirkian (comparative more Quirkian, superlative most Quirkian)

1. Of or relating to Randolph Quirk (born 1920), British linguist who championed a descriptive approach toward English grammar.
   • 1999, Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers, Päivi Pahta, Writing in nonstandard English, page 84:

     Naturally, such an interpretation must remain a wholly subjective matter even if one were to follow to their logical limits the clusters of Foucauldian and Quirkian beliefs about languages […]

   • 1999, Rodney D. Huddleston, Peter Collins, David A. Lee, The clause in English: in honour of Rodney Huddleston, page 310:

     […] three works of Crystal who, of course, used the Quirkian model.

   • 2005, Petra Perner, Atsushi Imiya, Machine learning and data mining in pattern recognition, page 572:

     We are interested in the Quirkian notion that frequency of use of words correlates with acceptability of those words as part of the vocabulary […]