A metaplasm is a change in the orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

 (and hence phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

) of a word. Originally it referred to techniques used in Ancient Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 and Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, or processes in those languages' grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

.

Sound change

Many poetic metaplasms are useful for describing processes in the natural development of languages:

• Epenthesis
  Epenthesis
  In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
  
  , addition of a sound to a word:
  • beginning of a word (prosthesis
    Prosthesis (linguistics)
    In linguistics, prosthesis is the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word without changing the word's meaning or the rest of its structure. The alternative spelling prothesis was first used in post-classical Latin, based on Greek próthesis "placing before" or "in public"...
    
    )
  • end (paragoge
    Paragoge
    Paragoge , adj. paragogic , is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. Often, this is due to nativization. It is a type of epenthesis, most commonly vocalic epenthesis.-Diachronic paragoge:...
    
    )
• Synalepha
  Synalepha
  A synalepha or synaloepha is the merging of two syllables into one, especially when it causes two words to be pronounced as one.The original meaning in Greek is more general than modern usage, and also includes coalescence of vowels within a word...
  
  , two syllables becoming one, occurs by elision, crasis, synaeresis, or synizesis.
  • Elision
    Elision
    Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
    
     ("contraction
    Contraction (grammar)
    A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....
    
    " in English
    English language
    English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
    
     grammar), removal of a sound:
    • beginning of a word (apheresis)
    • middle (syncope)
    • end (apocope
      Apocope
      In phonology, apocope is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Historical sound change:...
      
      ).
  • Crasis
    Crasis
    Crasis is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong — making one word out of two. Crasis occurs in Portuguese and Arabic as well as in Ancient Greek, where it was first described.-French:...
    
     (Ancient Greek contraction), coalescence of two vowels into a new long vowel.
  • Synaeresis
    Synaeresis
    In linguistics, synaeresis or syneresis is a sound change by which two vowels are pronounced together rather than separately...
    
    , pronunciation of two vowels as a diphthong. Opposite: diaeresis
    Diaeresis
    Diaeresis or dieresis may refer to:* Diaeresis , pronunciation of vowels in a diphthong separately, or the division made in a line of poetry when the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word...
    
    , pronunciation of a diphthong as two syllabic vowels.
  • Synizesis
    Synizesis
    Synizesis is a sound change in which two originally syllabic vowels are pronounced as a single syllable without change in writing. In Latin and Greek, this was often to preserve meter, but similar changes occur naturally in languages....
    
    , pronunciation of two vowels that do not form a normal diphthong as one syllable, without change in writing. Opposite: hiatus
    Hiatus (linguistics)
    In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....
    
    , distinct pronunciation of two adjacent vowels.
• Metathesis
  Metathesis (linguistics)
  Metathesis is the re-arranging of sounds or syllables in a word, or of words in a sentence. Most commonly it refers to the switching of two or more contiguous sounds, known as adjacent metathesis or local metathesis:...
  
  , rearranging of sounds or features of sounds, may affect vowel lengths (quantitative metathesis
  Quantitative metathesis
  Quantitative metathesis is a specific form of metathesis or transposition involving quantity or vowel length...
  
  ).

Romance languages

In the grammar of the Romance languages

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...

, metaplasm refers to the change in the grammatical gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 of noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s from their original gender in Latin.