Wh-movement
//ˌdʌbəlju ˈeɪtʃ ˌmuvmənt// noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause. countable, uncountable
Synonyms
All synonymsEtymology
Most English interrogative words start with wh-, for example, who, whom, whose, what, which, when, where, why, etc. (though how is an exception).
More for "wh-movement"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.