Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A grammatical ending; an inflection.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Ending; close; termination; specifically, in grammar, the termination or formative or inflectional suffix of a word.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Termination; ending.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun linguistics A
suffix used as aninflection ; anending
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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What really matters is the ending (the “desinence”) of the elements.
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There are not that many desinences, it is actually the null desinence which makes the nouns to expose a variety of endings.
The etymology of Latin tofus 'tufa' isn't written in stone 2009
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While in English, German, French and other Romance languages the determination (definite or indefinite) occurs by placing an element beforehand, the Nordic languages add a desinence to the noun: the house, das Haus, la maison, la casa, huset (indefinite form: hus).
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The desinence -ê'ïos has been given an entry of its her? own, with what are actually the definition and examples of the whole word "parthenê'ïos", which in turn does have an entry in Slater's Lexicon to Pindar.
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Conservation must, therefore, be the rule, and desinence the impossible exception.
Life: Its True Genesis R. W. Wright
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The desinence - kut'qin in these tribal names means inhabitants of (as well as 'tenne in other Déné denominations) and not men, as American ethnologists have freely stated.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 9: Laprade-Mass Liturgy 1840-1916 1913
qms commented on the word desinence
Does "giant" mean bigger or less immense?
By context you have to guess the sense -
A marketing label
Is wholly unstable
And shuns the assistance of desinence.
February 21, 2015