Grammar Glossary

Understanding grammar glossary is helpful in mastering proper grammar and other essential grammar concepts. This page will quickly give you a foundation in grammar glossary. A glossary of grammar terms.


Definition

GLOSSARY

Ambiguity—The possibility of more than one meaning.

Apposition—When the meaning of a noun or pronoun is made clear or emphatic by the use of another noun or pronoun the two are said to be in apposition, e. g., John, the old pressman.

Auxiliary Verb—A verb used to help to express the meaning of another verb by showing its voice, mood or tense.

Clause—A group of words consisting of a subject and predicate with their modifiers and forming a part of a sentence: a sentence within a sentence.

Collective Noun—A noun indicating a collection of units considered as a whole, e. g., crowd.

Compound Words—Words made up of two or more words used together to express one idea.

Context—The entire writing from which a text or passage is taken.

Correlative—A term applied to pairs of conjunctions or other words or phrases which imply or involve each other.

Diction—The choice and use of words.

Grammar—The science that treats of the principles that govern the correct use of language in either spoken or written form; the science of the sentence and its elements.

Heterogeneous Sentences—Sentences containing unrelated ideas or dealing with a variety of separate things.

Hypothesis—A supposition, or imaginary state of things assumed as a basis for reasoning.

Hypothetical Clause—A clause containing a supposition.

<a name="Page_53">[Pg 53]Metaphor—A figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another by speaking of it as if it were that other, or calling it that other.

Noun Clause—A clause used as a noun.

Object (of a Verb)—The thing acted on.

Participial Construction—A participle and its modifiers used as the subject or object of a verb.

Phrase—An expression, consisting usually of but a few words, denoting a single idea, or forming a separate part of a sentence.

Predicate (of a Sentence)—That which is said of the subject. See subject.

Principal Verb—The verb in the main statement of a sentence.

Pronominal Adjective—An adjective used as a pronoun.

Rhetoric—The art of perfecting man's power of communicating to others his mental acts or states by means of language: art of discourse.

Subject (of a Sentence)—The thing spoken about in the sentence. See predicate.

Subject (of a Verb)—The thing acting.

Subordinate Clause—A clause explaining or otherwise modifying the main statement of the sentence.