Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

“case: Inflectional category, basically of nouns, which typically marks their syntactic function in relation to other parts of a sentence. E.g, in Latin vidi puellam ‘I saw a girl,’ puellam ‘(a) girl’ has the ending of the accusative case (puella-m), which marks it as the object of the verb (vidi ‘I-saw’).

Thence of various more abstract constructs. Thus the function of Mary in I saw Mary is like that of puellam in the example from Latin. Therefore, it too is traditionally ‘accusative,’ in opposition to the same word as a ‘nominative,’ in Mary saw me. Hence abstract cases, posited in principle in all languages, regardless of whether they are realized, as in languages such as Latin, by inflections.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

“Orthography (noun): The writing of words with proper or accepted letters or symbols; the written or printed representation of speech sounds; the study or field of spelling or characters in a language; specific mode or system of spelling; correct spelling. Adjective: orthographic, orthographical; adverb: orthographically.

‘In these records we find numerous misused words, neologisms, and phonetic spellings remarkable even in that relatively freewheeling orthographic age, spellings like kow ceeper and piticler, pharme, and elc, engiane, and injun.’ Mary Dohan, Our Own Words.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.