Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The study of the rules whereby words or other elements of sentence structure are combined to form grammatical sentences.
  • noun A publication, such as a book, that presents such rules.
  • noun The pattern of formation of sentences or phrases in a language.
  • noun Such a pattern in a particular sentence or discourse.
  • noun Computers The rules governing the formation of statements in a programming language.
  • noun A systematic, orderly arrangement.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Connected system or order; union of things.
  • noun In grammar, the construction of sentences; the due forming and arrangement of words or members of sentences in their mutual relations according to established usage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Connected system or order; union of things; a number of things jointed together; organism.
  • noun That part of grammar which treats of the construction of sentences; the due arrangement of words in sentences in their necessary relations, according to established usage in any language.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A set of rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.
  • noun computing, countable The formal rules of formulating the statements of a computer language.
  • noun linguistics The study of the structure of phrases, sentences and language.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences
  • noun studies of the rules for forming admissible sentences
  • noun a systematic orderly arrangement

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French syntaxe, from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek suntaxis, from suntassein, to put in order : sun-, syn- + tassein, tag-, to arrange.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek σύνταξις (suntaksis), from σύν (sun, "together") + τάξις (taksis, "arrangement"), from τάσσω (tassō, "I arrange").

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