Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To alter (the voice) in tone or pitch; modulate.
  • intransitive verb Grammar To alter (a word) by inflection.
  • intransitive verb To turn from a course or a specified alignment; bend.
  • intransitive verb To be modified by inflection.
  • intransitive verb To give all of the inflected forms of a word; to provide a paradigm.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To bend; turn from a direct line or course.
  • In grammar, to vary, as a noun or verb, by change of form, especially in regard to endings; decline, as a noun or adjective, or conjugate, as a verb; more specifically, to denote a change of office in (words), not by added elements only, but more or less by alteration of the stem or root itself.
  • To modulate, as the voice.
  • To receive inflection; undergo grammatical changes of form.

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

  • transitive verb To turn from a direct line or course; to bend; to incline, to deflect; to curve; to bow.
  • transitive verb (Gram.) To vary, as a noun or a verb in its terminations; to decline, as a noun or adjective, or to conjugate, as a verb.
  • transitive verb To modulate, as the voice.

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

  • verb transitive To cause to curve inwards.
  • verb transitive, music To change the tone or pitch of the voice when speaking or singing.
  • verb transitive, grammar To vary the form of a word to express tense, gender, number, mood, etc.

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

  • verb vary the pitch of one's speech
  • verb change the form of a word in accordance as required by the grammatical rules of the language

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English inflecten, to bend down, from Latin īnflectere : in-, in; see in– + flectere, to bend.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin īnflectō, from in- ("in") + flectō ("I bend")

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Aloha means goodbye, and also hello. It is in how you inflect..."

    S. Malkmus

    March 12, 2009