inflection

/ɪnˈflɛkʃən/

/ɪnˈflɛkʃən/

Other forms: inflections

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.

Definitions of inflection

1. noun

   the patterns of stress and intonation in a language
   synonyms: prosody

   types:

   cadence, 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
2. noun

   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
3. noun

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

   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
4. noun

   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