Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of vocal expression; utterance or enunciation.
  • noun The act or manner of producing a speech sound.
  • noun A speech sound, especially a consonant.
  • noun A jointing together or being jointed together.
  • noun The method or manner of jointing.
  • noun A fixed or movable joint between bones.
  • noun A movable joint between inflexible parts of the body of an animal, as the divisions of an appendage in arthropods.
  • noun A joint between two separable parts, as a leaf and a stem.
  • noun A node or a space on a stem between two nodes.
  • noun The conversion of a student's credits at one school to credits at another school by comparing the curricula.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of articulating, or the state of being articulated. The act of putting together so as to form a joint or joints. The uttering of articulate sounds.
  • noun In a concrete sense: In anatomy, a joint, as the joining or juncture of bones or of the movable segments of an arthropod.
  • noun In botany: A joint; a place where separation takes place spontaneously, as at the point of attachment of a deciduous organ, such as a leaf or the pedicel of a flower, or easily, as at the divisions of the stem of the horsetail. A node: applied either to the thickened joint-like part of the stem where a leaf is placed or to the space between two such points.
  • noun In grammar, an articulate sound or utterance; especially, a consonant, as ordinarily affecting and marking syllabic division.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) A joint or juncture between bones in the skeleton.
  • noun The connection of the parts of a plant by joints, as in pods.
  • noun One of the nodes or joints, as in cane and maize.
  • noun One of the parts intercepted between the joints; also, a subdivision into parts at regular or irregular intervals as a result of serial intermission in growth, as in the cane, grasses, etc.
  • noun The act of putting together with a joint or joints; any meeting of parts in a joint.
  • noun rare The state of being jointed; connection of parts.
  • noun The utterance of the elementary sounds of a language by the appropriate movements of the organs, as in pronunciation.
  • noun A sound made by the vocal organs; an articulate utterance or an elementary sound, esp. a consonant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun countable or uncountable A joint or the collection of joints at which something is articulated, or hinged, for bending.
  • noun countable A manner or method by which elements of a system are connected.
  • noun uncountable The quality, clarity or sharpness of speech.
  • noun music, uncountable The manner in which something is articulated (tongued, slurred or bowed).
  • noun accounting The interrelation and congruence of the flow of data between financial statements of an entity, especially between the income statement and balance sheet.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun expressing in coherent verbal form
  • noun the act of joining things in such a way that motion is possible
  • noun the aspect of pronunciation that involves bringing articulatory organs together so as to shape the sounds of speech
  • noun (anatomy) the point of connection between two bones or elements of a skeleton (especially if it allows motion)
  • noun the shape or manner in which things come together and a connection is made

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French articulacion, from Medieval Latin articulatio

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Examples

  • (* The term articulation is used in this chapter to denote both

    The Evolution of Man — Volume 1 Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel 1876

  • I do this all the time, and it annoys me as coherent, meaningful narrative articulation is very very important to me (for reasons other than blogging), and yet its something I never feel I achieve on my blog – mostly through lack of time I get to devote to it anymore.

    The Story’s The Thing | Her Bad Mother 2009

  • Children whose articulation is poor often improve greatly when they are able to read, as the letters help them learn to produce the correct sounds and to sequence them appropriately.

    What Is The Relationship Between Oral Language And Literacy (writing) Learning? « Literacy « Literacy Help « Literacy News 2009

  • The figure features 28 points of articulation, is packaged in a deluxe 4-color window box with a fifth panel and includes a display stand.

    DC Comics for February 2010 | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News 2009

  • Two, that conservatives 'facility in articulation arises from their individual propensity to actually study-out the issues – they are individualists who selfishly relish responsibiltiy for their own thoughts and actions – and therefore can actually speak to the issues.

    Liberal bloggers admit conservatives have upper hand on Twitter 2009

  • This retrospective procedure has an uncanny import; by challenging us to discover its encrypted relationship to rhyme, the poem suggests that rhyme somehow operates inherently within articulation itself, even when, or especially when, the ear is unaware.

    Rhyming Sensation in 'Mont Blanc' 2008

  • He asks to think again, for example, about the relationship between read and heard versions of a poem, noting that Shelley's "poem suggests that rhyme somehow operates inherently within articulation itself, even when, or especially when, the ear is unaware," but wondering where that leaves us in our analysis of more "regular" poems.

    Introduction 2008

  • Here we are in the realm of science, but one whose critical, cultural, and literary articulation is radically beside the point of its own rationally organized disciplinary other.

    Introduction 2008

  • Even with the parseable verb-noun combination of a curse such as "Fuck me!", the articulation is hardly aimed at communicating the content, not in the way that an imperative like "Eat your greens" is aimed at communicating the content -- what is to be done and what it is to be done to.

    Archive 2008-09-01 Hal Duncan 2008

  • Leadership by pragmatism and articulation is always the best.

    Polls: Obama extending lead over McCain 2008

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