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Inflect for Dummies

verb

pronunciation: ɪn'flɛkt

What does Inflect really mean?

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Hello there! Today we're going to talk about the word "inflect." Are you ready? Great! So, "inflect" basically means to change the form of a word, usually to show different grammatical aspects like tense, mood, gender, or number. It's like giving a word a little makeover to fit in different sentences!

Let's dive a bit deeper, shall we? Imagine you have a favorite toy, let's call it Teddy. Now, Teddy can be a noun, right? But what if you want to talk about more than one Teddy? You would add an "s" to the end of the word, like "Teddys." You just inflected "Teddy" to show it's not one, but many! Pretty neat, huh? That's an example of how we inflect a noun to show its number.

Now, not only nouns can be inflected. Verbs, those action words we use to describe doing something, can also be inflected. Think about the verb "to run." If we want to talk about something that happened in the past, we change the word to "ran." So, you'd say, "Yesterday, I ran in the school race." In this case, we added an "n" to "run" to show that it happened before now. We just inflected the verb to show its tense!

So, do you get what "inflect" means?


Revised and Fact checked by Alex Johnson on 2023-10-29 03:33:05

Inflect In a sentece

Learn how to use Inflect inside a sentece

  • When we add -ed to the end of the word 'jump' to show that it happened in the past, we inflect the word to form 'jumped'.
  • If we say 'I walk' but 'he walks', we inflect the verb 'walk' to match the subject of the sentence.
  • When we change the word 'cat' to 'cats' to show that there is more than one, we inflect the noun.
  • If we say 'This is my book' but 'These are my books', we inflect the word 'this' to 'these' to match the plural noun.
  • When we modify the adjective 'good' to 'better' or 'best', we inflect the adjective to show different levels of comparison.

Inflect Synonyms

Words that can be interchanged for the original word in the same context.

modulate tone

Inflect Hypernyms

Words that are more generic than the original word.

modify mouth speak talk utter verbalise verbalize

Inflect Hyponyms

Words that are more specific than the original word.

compare conjugate decline pluralise pluralize