honorific transposition

English

Noun

honorific transposition (countable and uncountable, plural honorific transpositions)

1. (linguistics, Egyptology) A shift in the sign order of a compound word or common phrase, to make certain religiously significant terms (e.g. nswt, nṯr, rꜥ) appear at the front of the word or phrase.

   The Egyptian idiom ḥm-nṯr ("servant of a god" = "priest") is written:
   
   which would appear to read *nṯr-ḥm. However, this phrase shows honorific transposition of the nṯr glyph.