inflection

noun8

1. •
   A turning away from a straight course.
2. •
   The linguistic phenomenon of morphological variation, whereby words 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.
3. •
   Any specific type of morphological variation, which applies to a given word class.

   • The second-person imperative is a verbal inflection found in many Indo-European languages.
4. •
   A change in pitch or tone of voice.
5. •
   Any specific morphological form of a particular word, 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.
6. •
   An affix representing a given variation.

   • English's regular inflection for number in plural nouns is the suffix -s.
7. •
   A change in curvature from concave to convex or from convex to concave.
8. •
   Diffraction.