inflection

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of inflecting or the state of being inflected.
2. n. Alteration in pitch or tone of the voice.
3. n. Grammar An alteration of the form of word by the addition of an affix, as in English dogs from dog, or by changing the form of base, as in English spoke from speak, that indicates grammatical features such as number, person, mood, or tense.
4. n. Grammar An affix indicating such a grammatical feature, as the -s in the English third person singular verb form speaks.
5. n. Grammar The paradigm of a word.
6. n. Grammar A pattern of forming paradigms, such as noun inflection or verb inflection.
7. n. A turning or bending away from a course or position of alignment.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of inflecting, or the state of being inflected; a bend or bending.
2. n. In optics, the peculiar modification or deviation which light undergoes in passing the edges of an opaque body, usually attended by the formation of colored fringes: more commonly called diffraction.
3. n. In grammar, the variation of nouns, etc., by declension, and of verbs by conjugation; more specifically, variation in part by internal change, and not by added elements alone.
4. n. Modulation of the voice in speaking, or any change in the pitch or tone of the voice in singing.
5. n. In geometry, the place on a curve where a tangent moving along the curve by a rolling motion changes the direction of its turning, and begins to turn back; a stationary tangent. The point of tangency at an inflection is called a point of inflection or point of contrary flexure; but as it is now usual to consider a curve as being as much generated by the rolling tangent as by the moving poiut, geometricians speak of the inflection, meaning the tangent which becomes here for an instant stationary, and do not mention the point without special reason for doing so.
6. n. In eccles. chanting, same as accent, 7.

Wiktionary

1. n. grammar A change in the form of word that reflects a change in grammatical function.
2. n. A change in pitch or tone of voice.
3. n. mathematics A change in curvature from concave to convex or from convex to concave.
4. n. A turning away from a straight course.
5. n. optometry diffraction

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of inflecting, or the state of being inflected.
2. n. A bend; a fold; a curve; a turn; a twist.
3. n. A slide, modulation, or accent of the voice.
4. n. (Gram.) The variation or change which words undergo to mark case, gender, number, comparison, tense, person, mood, voice, etc.
5. n. Any change or modification in the pitch or tone of the voice.
6. n. A departure from the monotone, or reciting note, in chanting.
7. n. (Opt.) Same as Diffraction.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a manner of speaking in which the loudness or pitch or tone of the voice is modified
2. n. a change in the form of word (usually by adding a suffix) to indicate a change in its grammatical function
3. n. deviation from a straight or normal course
4. n. the patterns of stress and intonation in a language