Word.ws English Dictionary

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

  1. noun The linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby words take a number of distinct forms in order to express different grammatical features.
  2. noun Any specific type of morphological variation, which applies to a given word class.
  3. noun An affix representing a given variation.

Full definition of inflection

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.

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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.