Syntax
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A set of rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.
"The incorporation of a rule of V MOVEMENT into our description of English Syntax turns out to have fundamental theoretical implications for our overall Theory of Grammar: it means that we are no longer able to posit that the syntactic structure of a sentence can be described in terms of a single Phrase-marker representing its S-structure. For, the postulation of a rule of V-MOVEMENT means that we must recognise at least two different levels of structure in our Theory of Grammar — namely, a level of D-structure (formerly known as ‘Deep Structureʼ) which serves as input to the rule, and a separate level of S-structure which is formed by application of the rule."
- 2 the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences wordnet
- 3 The formal rules of formulating the statements of a computer language. countable
- 4 studies of the rules for forming admissible sentences wordnet
- 5 The study of the structure of phrases, sentences, and language.
"[Otto] Jespersen, a language professor known for his expertise in syntax and language development, stated that headlinese is not really grammatical writing."
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- 6 a systematic orderly arrangement wordnet
Example
More examples"Just imagine that every time somebody made a grammar mistake, people only could answer "Syntax error." and leave the somebody with that."
Etymology
Partly from Late Latin syntaxis and partly from its etymon, Ancient Greek σύνταξις (súntaxis), from σύν (sún, “together”) + τάξις (táxis, “arrangement”), from τάσσω (tássō, “I arrange”). Doublet of syntaxis.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.