| / English Dictionary |
INFLECTION
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The patterns of stress and intonation in a language
Synonyms:
inflection; prosody
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("inflection" is a kind of...):
delivery; manner of speaking; speech (your characteristic style or manner of expressing yourself orally)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "inflection"):
intonation; modulation; pitch contour (rise and fall of the voice pitch)
caesura (a break or pause (usually for sense) in the middle of a verse line)
enjambement; enjambment (the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause)
accent; emphasis; stress (the relative prominence of a syllable or musical note (especially with regard to stress or pitch))
rhythm; speech rhythm (the arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed elements)
Derivation:
inflect (vary the pitch of one's speech)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A manner of speaking in which the loudness or pitch or tone of the voice is modified
Synonyms:
inflection; modulation
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("inflection" is a kind of...):
delivery; manner of speaking; speech (your characteristic style or manner of expressing yourself orally)
Derivation:
inflect (vary the pitch of one's speech)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Deviation from a straight or normal course
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("inflection" is a kind of...):
departure; deviation; difference; divergence (a variation that deviates from the standard or norm)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A change in the form of a word (usually by adding a suffix) to indicate a change in its grammatical function
Synonyms:
inflection; inflexion
Classified under:
Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas
Hypernyms ("inflection" is a kind of...):
grammatical relation (a linguistic relation established by grammar)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "inflection"):
conjugation (the inflection of verbs)
declension (the inflection of nouns and pronouns and adjectives in Indo-European languages)
paradigm (systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word)
pluralisation; pluralization (the act of pluralizing or attributing plurality to)
Derivation:
inflect (change the form of a word in accordance as required by the grammatical rules of the language)
inflectional (characterized by inflections indicating grammatical distinctions)
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
