inflect

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English inflecten,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Latin īnflectō (“to bend in, curve; to change, alter, modulate”),^[5][6][7][8] with the past participle inflexus,^[8][7] from in- (“in”) and flectō (“to bend”),^[5][4][8] which Etymonline calls of uncertain origin.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

To bend down: about 1425, in the Book of Foundation of St Bartholomew's, of someone who would "inflecte and bowe downe his yie".^[2][5] Barnhart dates it about the same time, with the sense to bend downward or curve.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The figurative use, to incline or dispose, is recorded from before 1575, in Harpsfield.^[5] The grammatical sense, varying the ending of a word to show its grammatical relations, appears in 1668, in Bishop Wilkins's Essay Towards a Real Character;^[5][6] Barnhart dates the same sense of inflection to that year.^[6] Newton's Opticks used the verb for the bending of rays of light past an edge, an optical sense that later died out.^[5][9] Johnson (1755) has "to bend; to turn", quoting Newton, and "to vary a noun or verb in its terminations".^[10] Modulating the voice is first recorded in 1828, in Webster's dictionary;^[5][6] Barnhart treats it as an American back-formation from the older use of inflection for the voice, recorded before 1600.^[6] A musical use, flattening or sharpening a note by a chromatic semitone, belongs with it,^[5][9] and in the late 19th century words were also said to inflect, intransitively.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – to bend down, to bend inward or into a curve.^[5][2][6]
• before 1575 – figuratively, to incline or dispose.^[5]
• 1668 – in grammar, to vary the ending of a word.^[5][6]
• before 1727 – in optics, to bend rays of light (obsolete by 1811).^[5]
• 1828 – to modulate the voice.^[5][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. In grammar, to change the form of a word to show its case, number, tense or the like; to decline or conjugate: Latin inflects its nouns for case.^[11][3][5]
2. Of a word, to change its form in this way.^[11][9]
3. To change the tone or pitch of the voice; to modulate: He inflected the last word so that it sounded like a question.^[11][3][5]
4. In music, to raise or lower a note by a chromatic semitone.^[5][9]
5. To turn from a straight line or course; to bend or curve.^[11][3][5]
6. Figuratively, to incline or dispose.^[5][9]
7. (obsolete, before 1727–1811) In optics, to bend rays of light; to diffract.^[5][9]

Word family

• inflective
• inflector
• inflectable
• inflectedness
• inflection
• inflexion

Related words

• flex
• flexible
• inflexible
• reflect
• deflect
• genuflect

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins