inflection

CEFRC1

/ɪnˈflɛkʃən/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A change in the sound or tone of a voice.

  2. 02

    noun

    A change in the form of a word to show grammar.

Examples

  • Every sentence he spoke ended in an incredibly annoying upward inflection.

  • In English, word order often does the work that inflection did in Latin.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Synonyms
1

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. The linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby terms take a number of distinct forms in order to express different grammatical features.

  2. Any specific type of morphological variation, which applies to a given class of terms.

  3. An affix representing a given variation.

More examples

In context

  • English's regular inflection for number in plural nouns is the suffix -s.

  • The second-person imperative is a verbal inflection found in many Indo-European languages.

  • Recite every inflection for each of these words.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

In English, a rising blank at the end of a sentence can indicate a question.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From older inflexion, borrowed from Middle French inflexion, itself borrowed from Latin inflexiōnem (“alteration”, literally “bending”). The English spelling with ⟨ct⟩ is due to influence from inflect or related words like correction.