# grammar

Pronunciation: US say "GRAM-er" /ˈɡɹæm.ɚ/; UK say "GRAM-uh" /ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/

## Noun

1. The body of rules and principles that governs how a particular language, or human language as a whole, is put together.
   - Simple: The rules that a language follows for putting words together.
   - _The grammar of Japanese places the verb at the end of the clause._
   - _Linguists have long asked whether all human grammars share a common core._
2. Notions, real or merely supposed, about the correct way to use a language.
   - Simple: Ideas about the right and wrong ways to use a language.
   - _Purists still insist it is bad grammar to end a sentence with a preposition._
   - _The editor fixed the grammar but left the author's voice alone._
3. The study of the rules and principles that structure a language, or languages in general.
   - Simple: The study of how words are put together in a language.
   - _She studied grammar and phonology at the graduate level._
   - _Traditional grammar sorts words into parts of speech such as nouns, verbs and adjectives._
4. A book that sets out the rules and structure of a particular language.
   - Simple: A book that explains the rules of a language.
   - _She spent years writing the first grammar of the island's language._
   - _Every serious student of Latin keeps a good reference grammar on the desk._
5. Short for grammar school in informal British English: a state secondary school that admits pupils by an academic test, such as the eleven-plus. *(colloquial, British)* — Ellipsis of grammar school.
   - Simple: Short for grammar school, in informal British English: a secondary school that children enter by passing an exam.
   - _He passed the eleven-plus and went up to the grammar in the autumn._
   - _Half the lads from our street ended up at the grammar, the rest at the secondary modern._
6. The basic rules or principles that a field of knowledge or a particular skill is built on.
   - Simple: The basic rules of a subject or skill.
   - _Early filmmakers had to invent a grammar of editing that audiences now take for granted._
   - _The protests forced leaders to learn a new grammar of politics, built on social media rather than speeches._
7. A formal system of rules that specifies the syntax of a language, defining exactly which strings belong to it.
   - Simple: In computing, a set of exact rules that says how the sentences or code of a language must be built.
   - _The parser generator reads a context-free grammar and produces code that recognizes the language._
   - _Compiler writers often rewrite ambiguous grammars so that each program has only one parse._

## Noun

8. A book setting out the basic rules or principles of a subject or skill; a textbook. *(archaic, British)*
   - Simple: A book that teaches the basic rules of a subject.

## Verb

9. To discourse in keeping with the rules of grammar; to use grammar. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To speak or write by the rules of grammar.

## Other meanings

- (noun) In cellular automata such as Conway's Game of Life, a set of small component patterns and the rules for combining them, used to assemble larger patterns such as oscillators, spaceships, and large still lifes.

## Origin

The root is Proto-Indo-European *gerbʰ- ("to carve, scratch"), which gave Ancient Greek gráphō ("write"), grámma ("line of writing") and grammatikḗ ("skilled in writing"). Latin took this as grammatica, altered in Vulgar Latin to an unrecorded *grammāria, and it reached English through Old French gramaire ("classical learning") and Middle English gramere. It pushed out the native Old English stæfcræft, and glamour, gramarye and grimoire are doublets.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/grammar (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).