In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant default or minimum-effort form is known as unmarked; the other, secondary one is marked. In other words, markedness involves the characterization of a "normal" linguistic unit against one or more of its possible "irregular" forms.

In linguistics, markedness can