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 orpitch of the voice when speaking or singing. - verb transitive, grammar To vary the form of a
word to expresstense ,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
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Shameful that so-called journalists these days always have to inflect their own opinion and/or emotions into stories.
Poor Representation 2009
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"If I could inflect pain, I inflicted it to the max," Gore declared, describing how he had scalped several victims to satisfy a hair fetish.
Pete Earley: A Serial Killer 'Talks' Too Much, May Speed Up His Own Execution Pete Earley 2012
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With a title like Colonel Blimp, it's assumed the film is concerned solely with matters of men and war, but it's frequently Kerr's performances that inflect it with layers of emotion and romance.
Penelope Andrew: Powell/Pressburger 1943 Classic Conjures Deborah Kerr's Early Artistry and Winston Churchill's Wrath Penelope Andrew 2011
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Shameful that so-called journalists these days always have to inflect their own opinion and/or emotions into stories.
Poor Representation 2009
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We never forget we are in a single small town, thinking our way through the particular names, histories and legends that inflect its thought.
Hinduism Cast Against Modernity Chandrahas Choudhury 2011
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With a title like Colonel Blimp, it's assumed the film is concerned solely with matters of men and war, but it's frequently Kerr's performances that inflect it with layers of emotion and romance.
Penelope Andrew: Powell/Pressburger 1943 Classic Conjures Deborah Kerr's Early Artistry and Winston Churchill's Wrath Penelope Andrew 2011
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They often use primitive weapons rocks, blunt objects and machetes to conserve their limited munitions and inflect maximum brutality.
Jedidiah Jenkins: Obama Made the Right Decision in Africa, Here's Why... Jedidiah Jenkins 2011
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Just be careful how you inflect the acronym of that organization.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Harold Koh Statements on Drone Warfare at ASIL Tonight 2010
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"If I could inflect pain, I inflicted it to the max," Gore declared, describing how he had scalped several victims to satisfy a hair fetish.
Pete Earley: A Serial Killer 'Talks' Too Much, May Speed Up His Own Execution Pete Earley 2012
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The company coached the new voice actress to inflect her voice in the same way that an experienced customer-service representative would and rewrote her script to sound similar to a live agent.
Automated Lines' Softer Tone Joe Light 2010
djsalinger commented on the word inflect
"Aloha means goodbye, and also hello. It is in how you inflect..."
S. Malkmus
March 12, 2009