Liberal Dictionary English Dictionary
noun
- the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed; morphology and syntax.
- these features or constructions themselves: English grammar.
- an account of these features; a set of rules accounting for these constructions: a grammar of English.
- Generative Grammar. a device, as a body of rules, whose output is all of the sentences that are permissible in a given language, while excluding all those that are not permissible.
- prescriptive grammar.
- knowledge or usage of the preferred or prescribed forms in speaking or writing: She said his grammar was terrible.
- the elements of any science, art, or subject.
- a book treating such elements.
noun
- the branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and morphology, sometimes also phonology and semantics
- the abstract system of rules in terms of which a person’s mastery of his native language can be explained
- a systematic description of the grammatical facts of a language
- a book containing an account of the grammatical facts of a language or recommendations as to rules for the proper use of a language
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- the use of language with regard to its correctness or social propriety, esp in syntaxthe teacher told him to watch his grammar
- (as modifier)a grammar book
- the elementary principles of a science or artthe grammar of drawing
early 14c., gramarye (late 12c. in surnames), from Old French gramaire “learning,” especially Latin and philology, “grammar, (magic) incantation, spells, mumbo-jumbo,” “irregular semi-popular adoption” [OED] of Latin grammatica, from Greek grammatike tekhne “art of letters,” with a sense of both philology and literature in the broadest sense, fem. adjective from gramma “letter,” from stem of graphein “to draw or write” (see -graphy). An Old English word for it was stæfcræft.
Form grammar is from late 14c. Restriction to “rules of language” is a post-classical development, but as this type of study was until 16c. limited to Latin, Middle English gramarye also came to mean “learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes” (early 14c.), which included astrology and magic; hence the secondary meaning of “occult knowledge” (late 15c.), which evolved in Scottish into glamor (q.v.).
A grammar school (late 14c.) originally was “a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught” [Johnson, who also has grammaticaster “a mean verbal pedant”]. In U.S. (1842) the term was put to use in the graded system for “a school between primary and secondary where English grammar is taught.”
The rules for standard use of words. A grammar is also a system for classifying and analyzing the elements of language.