postilion sentence
postilion sentence noun: a phrase that is linguistically correct, but of no realistically practical use.
Noun
postilion sentence (plural postilion sentences)
- A phrase that is linguistically correct, but of no realistically practical use.
- As good as the peccadillo sentence is, it is not on a par with the postilion sentence. Nothing is. That sentence is cast in golden moonshine and should never be disturbed.1990, Jack Matthews, Memoirs of a Bookman, Ohio University Press, page 115
- To test whether a candidate sentence is a postilion sentence, all we have to do is try to identify the context(s) in which it would be used. If we have difficulty finding a plausible context, then we have such a sentence.1995, David Crystal, “Postilion Sentences”, in Journal of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, volume 5, page 15
Forms of postilion sentence
| plural | postilion sentences |
|---|
Origin of postilion sentence
Refers to the phrase "My postillion has been struck by lightning," said to be an example of the unusual terms found in some 19th- and early 20th-century phrasebooks.
Questions about postilion sentence
- What does postilion sentence mean?
- Postilion sentence means a phrase that is linguistically correct, but of no realistically practical use.
- What part of speech is postilion sentence?
- Postilion sentence is a noun.
- What is the plural of postilion sentence?
- The plural of postilion sentence is postilion sentences.
Words near postilion sentence in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: postilion sentence (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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