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gradation

gradation

1 8.6
A change in a word's vowel sound to show a different tense or form
  • noun
  • /ɡreɪˈdeɪʃən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : gradación
  • In most species, there is a base-to-apex gradation of efferent innervation, with more efferent terminals ending on outer hair cells at the base of the cochlea.

That's not part of the so-called principal parts or vowel gradations of the strong verb series.

Examples

  • In linguistics, the concept of gradation refers to the variations in vowel sounds that can change the meaning of a word.

  • The aggregates in this study were natural river sand (RS) and CS. CS was sieved to have the same particle size gradation as RS, and their gradation is illustrated in Fig. 2.

    Academic text (2018)
  • In addition, the effect of the maximum aggregate size for natural sand was investigated by using four different levels of gradation.

    Academic text (2016)
  • Figure 1 shows the gradation curves for the sand used with different granular sizes.

    Academic text (2016)
  • The chemical properties and the gradation of the ground silica are shown in Table 1 and Fig. 1, respectively.

    Academic text (2016)
  • Contemporary attitudes towards religion in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia represent a systematic gradation as one travels from west to east.

    Academic text (1996)
  • Obviously, photography could not yet reproduce color, but worse, as Isabelle Jammes points out, it could not render even the gradation of tone.

    Academic text (2006)
  • In Measure for Measure, chiasmus by way of inversion lays bare the identity and association, opposition, and gradation in exchanges that we stop and measure the propositions at issue.

    Academic text (2001)
  • At the anatomical level, cell differentiation and organization into thallus layers frequently occur in a gradation reminiscent of histogenesis at plant apices.

    Academic text (2001)
  • The aggregate gradations of the 10 mm (0.4 in.) crushed stones, natural sand, and CR are presented in Fig. 1.

    Academic text (2017)

Surface Forms

gradation singular
gradations plural

Morphology

gradation = grade (opaque) = grade + ation

Although the word is historically built from 'grade' and '-ation', the technical linguistic sense depends on specialized phonological terminology that is not directly inferable for most learners.

Etymology

Gradation comes from the Latin root grad- meaning 'step', the same root you see in grade and graduate. In language study, gradation is a step-like change in vowel sounds, for example 'sing', 'sang', 'sung', so the word shows these small 'steps' between word forms.