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inflection

By Richard Nordquist, About.com

Definition:

A process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings. See also: Introduction to Etymology: Word Histories.

Etymology:

From the Latin, "to bend"

Examples and Observations:

  • "Inflections are morphemes that signal the grammatical variants of a word; the inflectional -s at the end of ideas indicates that the noun is plural; the inflectional -s at the end of makes indicates that the verb is the third person singular, so that we say she makes but I make and they make. In addition, some affixes signal the part of speech to which a word belongs: the prefix -en in enslave converts the noun slave into a verb, and the suffix -ize converts the adjective modern into the verb modernize."
    (Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar, Oxford University Press, 1996)


  • "Word endings can also be inflections, which indicate categories such as tense, person and number. The inflection -ed can change a verb from present to past tense (walk/walked), and the inflection -s can indicate third person singular concord with a subject. But inflections do not change the word class. Walk and walked are both verbs."
    (Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press, 2006)


  • "If I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality."
    (Richard M. Nixon)


  • "Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and monkeys do too (if they have a gun)."
    (Eddie Izzard)
Pronunciation: in-FLEX-shunAudio Link
Also Known As: inflexion (chiefly British)

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