How to use inflection in a sentence
27 example sentences · noun
Inflection means the linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby words take a number of distinct forms in order to express different grammatical features. Example: “In English, word order often does the work that inflection did in Latin.”
Examples of inflection by meaning
nounThe linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby words take a number of distinct forms in order to express...
- In English, word order often does the work that inflection did in Latin.
nounAny specific type of morphological variation, which applies to a given word class.
- The second-person imperative is a verbal inflection found in many Indo-European languages.
nounAn affix representing a given variation.
- English's regular inflection for number in plural nouns is the suffix -s.
nounAny specific morphological form of a particular word, such as the principal parts for any given stem; any of the...
- Recite every inflection for each of these words.
nounA turning away from a straight course.
- inflection from the rules
More sentences with inflection
- In Latin, adjectives and nouns inflect a lot, but inflection is minimally found in Modern English.From the entry inflect
- He acutes his rising inflection too much.From the entry acute
- The harmonic polar line of an inflection point of a cubic curve is the component of the polar conic other than the tangent line.From the entry harmonic
- “I appreciate your curiosity,” Oliver answers in hurried monotone without inflection or pauses for punctuation.2025 August 4, Dara Kerr, “Jim Acosta interviews ‘made-up’ AI avatar of Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver”, in The Guardian. From the entry oliver
- It is the psychoanalytic inflections that elevate this book above so much recent “techlash” literature.2019 August 8, William Davies, “The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour review – escape from dystopia”, in The Guardian. From the entry techlash
- I created a protolang (consisting mainly of phonology and inflections) to ensure realistic mutations.1998 November 9, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@ufl.edu>, “New Project”, in Conlang mailing list. From the entry protolang
- Jazz symbols include many contoured articulations and inflections, such as doits, fall-offs, and scoops.1995, Music & Computers, volume 1, numbers 2-4, page 57. From the entry scoop
- "Electronic pads aren't sensitive enough yet to really reproduce his inflections.1990, Modern Drummer: MD. - Volume 14, Issues 7-12, page 170. From the entry velocitize
- “We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.2025 October 26, Mike Lillis, “SNAP funding expiration set to hit 40 million people”, in The Hill. From the entry WIC
- These companies are at an inflection point.2025 May 30, Karen Hao, “Silicon Valley Is at an Inflection Point”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry inflection point
- He answered with his usual detached inflection, “Yallo.”2012, Ann J. Colby, Cross Town Murders, page 378. From the entry yallo
- The loss of the ergative inflection in C.2008, Geoffrey Khan, “Introduction”, in HdO: The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Barwar (Handbook of Oriental Studies; Section 1 (The Near and…. From the entry ergative
- His inflection carries that stonerlike quality of sounding perpetually surprised.2008 June 30, Rob Kuznia, “A Hippie and His Van: They’re a Piece of Work, Man”, in Noozhawk. From the entry stonerlike
- The following two examples illustrate incorrect delative inflection.2007, Gergely Tóth, Linguistic Interference and First-language Attrition: German and Hungarian in the San Francisco Bay Area, page 140. From the entry superessive
- Interestingly, the inflection of masculine n-stems in Germanic appears to have evolved from an originally amphikinetic pattern (cf.2006, Don Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European To Proto-Germanic, Oxford University Press, page 45. From the entry amphikinetic
- Mid-ventrally the sternopleurites unite in a suture, the discrimen, whose inflection forms the very high transparent lamella of the discrimen.1960, Fred A. Urquhart, The monarch butterfly, page 227. From the entry discrimen
- He spoke with little movement of the lips, so that his voice was almost without inflection and marked by gutturalness.1937, Todd Downing, The Last Trumpet. From the entry gutturalness
- Oh God!" — the first division of it rising in inflection, the second division inflected fallingly with despair.1915, Jack London, The Little Lady of the Big House. From the entry fallingly
- Gore can't even change the inflection in his voice without sounding like someone trying to talk and hold a vurp back at the same time.2000 August 18, SilverBullet, “Al Gore: I Am My Own Man...”, in alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater (Usenet). From the entry vurp
- He's hazy on the ideas or moments that definitely shifted his political worldview, but he says: “I've always been good at spotting inflection points and trends.”2025 August 2, Anna Gross, quoting Zia Yusuf, “Lunch with the FT: Zia Yusuf”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial…. From the entry inflection point
- Using diachronic evidence from Swedish, I will show that inflectional endings may be maintained as “less cumulative” inflections, or even degrammaticalize into a derivational suffix or a clitic.2002, Ilse Wischer, Gabriele Diewald, New Reflections on Grammaticalization, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 45. From the entry ending
- Fifi smiles and nods, then says “yes” in Amharic with that typical Ethiopian inflection that makes it sound less like a word and more like a sharp intake of air.2019, Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King, Canongate Books, published 2020, pages 218–219. From the entry Amharic
Meaning of inflection
- noun The linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby words take a number of distinct forms in order to express different grammatical features.
- noun Any specific type of morphological variation, which applies to a given word class.
- noun An affix representing a given variation.
Questions about inflection in a sentence
- How do you use inflection in a sentence?
- Inflection is used as a noun. For example: “In English, word order often does the work that inflection did in Latin.”
- What is a short sentence with inflection?
- “inflection from the rules”
- What does inflection mean?
- Inflection means the linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby words take a number of distinct forms in order to express different grammatical features.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: inflection (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this page: “How to use inflection in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/inflection. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
