inflection - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com

Inflection refers to the ups and downs of a language. Even if you can’t understand Italian yet, the inflection in your professor’s voice should tip you off to whether she's asking a question, giving a command, or making a joke.

What began in the 1500s as a noun of action spelled inflexion has since evolved into inflection, a word with grammatical connotation. Inflection most often refers to the pitch and tone patterns in a person’s speech: where the voice rises and falls. But inflection also describes a departure from a normal or straight course. When you change, or bend, the course of a soccer ball by bouncing it off another person, that’s an example of inflection.

PRIMARY MEANINGS OF: inflection

1	n	the patterns of stress and intonation in a language
2	n	a change in the form of a word (usually by adding a suffix) to indicate a change in its grammatical function
3	n	deviation from a straight or normal course

FULL DEFINITIONS OF: inflection

1

n the patterns of stress and intonation in a language

Synonyms:: prosody

Types:: show 12 types...; hide 12 types...; 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; intonation pattern
intonations characteristic of questions and requests and statements; drone, droning, monotone
an unchanging intonation; singsong
a regular and monotonous rising and falling intonation; accentuation
the use or application of an accent; the relative prominence of syllables in a phrase or utterance; pitch accent, tonic accent
emphasis that results from pitch rather than loudness; word accent, word stress
the distribution of stresses within a polysyllabic word; sentence stress
the distribution of stresses within a sentence

Type of:: delivery, manner of speaking, speech
your characteristic style or manner of expressing yourself orally

n a manner of speaking in which the loudness or pitch or tone of the voice is modified

Synonyms:: modulation

Type of:: delivery, manner of speaking, speech
your characteristic style or manner of expressing yourself orally

2

n a change in the form of a word (usually by adding a suffix) to indicate a change in its grammatical function

Synonyms:: inflexion

Types:: show 4 types...; hide 4 types...; 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

Type of:: grammatical relation
a linguistic relation established by grammar

3

n deviation from a straight or normal course

Synonyms:: flection, flexion

Type of:: departure, deviation, difference, divergence
a variation that deviates from the standard or norm