inflectere

Inflectere is a Latin verb meaning to bend, turn aside, or, in a linguistic sense, to modify the form of a word to express grammatical categories such as case, number, tense, mood, voice, person, or gender. In classical Latin grammar it appears with the principal parts inflecto, inflectere, inflexi, inflectus, with the infinitive form inflectere. The stem inflect- is shared with related Latin verbs such as flectere (to bend) and gives rise to English derivatives like inflect, inflection, and flection.

Etymology and related terms. The verb belongs to the third conjugation and derives from the combination of in- (toward, into) and flectere (to bend). The same lineage underpins English terms such as inflect, inflection, and the noun inflectio in Latin grammars. In contrast, defelectere or deflection uses a different prefix and shifts toward bending away. In linguistic usage, inflect refers to the process of altering a word’s form to encode grammatical information, while inflectiona (inflectiones) or inflexiones describe the actual word forms produced.

Usage in linguistics and examples. In Latin sentences, grammarians describe how a verb inflects for person and number (amo, amas, amat; amāmus, amātis, amant) or how nouns inflect for case and number. In modern linguistics, inflect is used cross-l languages to describe similar morphological processes, distinguishing inflection from derivation and compounding. The concept remains central to understanding how languages encode grammatical relations within word forms.