Agrammatical

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Lacking adherence to established grammatical rules and structures
2. Exhibiting deviations from accepted grammatical norms in language use
3. Not conforming to the standard rules that govern sentence structure and grammar

Etymology: "Agrammatical" is a plain formation: the prefix "a-" attached to "grammatical," meaning "not" or "without." The prefix comes from Greek "a-" (or "an-" before vowels), a negating element that appears in many English words such as "atypical" and "amoral." Its job here is simply to reverse the sense of the base word, so a sentence that breaks the rules of syntax or morphology is called agrammatical. "Grammatical" itself descends from Greek "grammatikos," meaning "concerning letters or writing," from "gramma," a letter of the alphabet. The word therefore began with the practical business of writing and reading before it came to describe the rules of language. Adding "a-" to that base produces a term that is useful mainly to linguists, who use it to mark a sentence as unacceptable to native speakers, usually flagged with an asterisk in examples.

Synonyms: incorrect, ungrammatical, ill-formed

Antonyms: grammatical, correct