inflection

Definition

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

Etymology

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.

Example Sentences

• "In English, word order often does the work that inflection did in Latin."
• "The second-person imperative is a verbal inflection found in many Indo-European languages."
• "English's regular inflection for number in plural nouns is the suffix -s."

Related Words