inflection

Noun

1. The linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby terms take a number of distinct forms in order to express different grammatical features.
   • In English, word order often does the work that inflection did in Latin.

   1. (countable) Any specific type of morphological variation, which applies to a given class of terms.

      • The second-person imperative is a verbal inflection found in many Indo-European languages.

   2. (countable) An affix representing a given variation.

      • English's regular inflection for number in plural nouns is the suffix -s.

   3. (countable) Any specific morphological form of a particular term, such as the principal parts for any given stem; any of the declined or conjugated forms that constitute its declension or conjugation.

      • Recite every inflection for each of these words.
2. A change in pitch or tone of voice.
3. A change in curvature from concave to convex or from convex to concave.
4. A turning away from a straight course.
   • inflection from the rules
5. Diffraction.