Grammar Glossary: What It Is and How To Use It

Do you know what grammar glossaries are? This article will provide you with all of the information you need on glossaries, including its definition, usage, example sentences, and more!

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What is a grammar glossary?

According to Word Sense, a glossary is a list of words accompanied by their definitions. You may be wondering how this is different from a dictionary. Well, a glossary is different from a dictionary in that is consists of a list of terms in a particular field or domain of knowledge. A glossary could even be used at the end of a fiction book to provide definitions about terms that may be new to the reader in the book.

A grammatical glossary, or a grammar glossary, is a glossary that focuses on the field of grammar terms. Learning grammatical terms when English is a second language can be very challenging. However, a glossary is a great point of reference to try and see what terms you do and do now know. Take a look at these sentence examples of glossary from Your Dictionary:

  • The area also contains a glossary of Terms used.
  • At the very least a glossary with examples is needed for I suspect that even generative grammarians will find this hard going.
  • The glossary contains a broad collection of terms that cover most aspects of earthquake phenomena including seismology, geophysics and structural geology.
  • However, you can look at our glossary, which explains the meaning of all these new terms.
  • A glossary of healthcare terms is available.
  • Peter Garwood is compiling a glossary of archaic words and phrases useful for genealogical research in Scotland.
  • For the general reader the most useful text is that of Bartsch in Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, as it includes notes and a glossary.
  • Look up words you do not understand in a glossary.
  • In addition, a comprehensive glossary provides an invaluable reference tool.

Many different languages also contain words that mean glossary. You may notice that some of these translations of glossary look and sound similar to one another. These are called cognates, which are words and phrases in different languages that likely have the same root or language of origin, causing them to sound the same. The below list of translations of glossary is provided by Word Sense

  •  Italian: glossario‎ (masc.)
  •  Bokmål: ordliste‎ (masc.) (f)
  •  French: glossaire‎
  •  Dutch: glossarium‎ (neut.)
  •  German: Glossar‎ (neut.)
  •  Czech: slovník pojmů‎ (masc.), slovníček pojmů‎ (masc.), glosář‎ (masc.)
  •  Albanian: fjalorth‎ (masc.)
  •  Georgian: გლოსარიუმი‎
  •  Polish: glosariusz‎ (masc.)
  •  Mandarin: 詞匯表‎ or 詞彙表‎, 词汇表‎ (cíhuìbiǎo), 詞匯‎ or 詞彙‎, 词汇‎ (cíhuì)
  •  Russian: глосса́рий‎ (masc.), слова́рь‎ (masc.)
  •  Japanese: 用語集‎ (ようごしゅう, yōgoshū), 語彙‎ (ごい, goi), グロッサリー‎ (gurossarī)
  •  Norwegian: glossar‎ (neut.)
  •  Finnish: sanasto‎; asiasanasto‎
  •  Icelandic: orðasafn‎ (neut.)
  •  Macedonian: поимник‎
  •  Greek: γλωσσάριο‎ (neut.)
  •  Swedish: ordförklaring‎
  •  Nynorsk: ordliste‎ (fem.)
  •  Turkish: lügatçe‎
  •  Bulgarian: речник‎ (masc.), речниково гнездо‎ (neut.)
  •  Irish: foclóirín‎ (masc.)
  •  Esperanto: glosaro‎
  •  Portuguese: glossário‎ (masc.)
  •  Danish: glosar‎, glossar‎, glosarium‎, glossarium‎, glosebog‎, ordliste‎, termliste‎, gloseliste‎, glossehæfte‎,
  •  Hungarian: szójegyzék‎
  •  Norman: glossaithe‎ (masc.)
  •  Romansch: glossari‎ (masc.)
  •  Tagalog: talaturingan‎, talahuluganan‎
  •  Spanish: glosario‎ (masc.)

What are examples of a glossary?

Grammar glossaries can be used in many different contexts in the English language. Trying to use a word or grammatical technique in a sentence is one of the best ways to memorize what it is, but you can also try making flashcards or quizzes that test your knowledge. Try using this term of the day in a sentence today! Below are a couple of examples of numbers that can help get you started incorporating this tool into your everyday use.  Take a look at this glossary and see which of these grammatical categories you know!!

There are many different grammatical techniques and devices that you might see when you are reading prose or poetry. It is important to recognize these terms because they are always used for some purpose. Knowing these devices can help readers understand the author’s deeper meaning and why they are using such a device. Take a look at the below list of grammatical devices from OED and see how many you know! Then try researching ones that are unfamiliar to you. 

  • apodosis and protasis
  •  progressive
  •  locative
  •  infinitive
  •  sentence adverb |sentence adverbial
  •  stem
  •  relative
  •  anticipatory
  •  nominal relative | nominal 
  •  quotation marks
  •  possessive case
  •  active voice
  •  coordinating conjunctions
  •  relative clause
  •  predicative
  •  present participle
  •  prepositional passive
  •  combining form (comb. form)
  •  intensifier
  •  passive
  •  active
  •  plural
  •  transitive
  •  indicative
  •  direct object
  •  possessive adjective
  •  participle | past participle | present participle
  •  filler
  •  quasi-
  •  definite article
  •  common noun
  •  compound | compounding
  •  third-person
  •  appositive
  •  masculine
  •  subjective
  •  antecedent
  •  perfect
  •  parasynthetic
  •  part of speech
  •  inflection | inflected | inflectional
  •  indirect passive
  •  noun phrase
  •  cognate object
  •  adjective
  •  prepositional phrase
  •  direct question
  •  positive
  •  cataphoric
  •  direct speech
  •  irregular verb
  •  compound sentence
  •  determiner
  •  mass noun
  •  concrete noun
  •  declarative
  •  demonstrative
  •  personal pronoun
  •  phrase (phr.)
  •  number
  •  interrogative
  •  complementary
  •  verb (v.)
  •  comparative
  •  conditional
  •  similative
  •  zero
  •  superlative
  •  apposition
  •  optative
  •  indirect speech
  •  absolute (absol.)
  •  dative
  •  pleonasm | pleonastic
  •  genitive
  •  abstract
  •  possessive pronoun
  •  subjunctive
  •  construction
  •  present tense
  •  causative
  •  bare infinitive
  •  phrasal verb
  •  element
  •  tense
  •  subordinate clause
  •  past tense
  •  concrete
  •  prepositional object
  •  neuter
  •  parenthetical | parenthetically
  •  combination
  •  objective
  •  article
  •  main clause
  •  modal verb | modal auxiliary verb | modal auxiliary
  •  predicate
  •  instrumental
  •  simple
  •  passive infinitive
  •  agree | agreement
  •  suffix
  •  impersonal (impers.)
  •  gerund
  •  head
  •  anaphoric
  •  dual
  •  non-referential
  •  singular
  •  indefinite
  •  morpheme
  •  premodify | premodifier
  •  imperative (imper.)
  •  collective noun
  •  finite
  •  reflexive
  •  vocative
  •  person
  •  attributive
  •  complement
  •  preposition (prep.)
  •  indirect question
  •  indirect object
  •  protasis
  •  object | direct object | indirect object
  •  modify | modifier
  •  second person
  •  adverb (adv.)
  •  main verb
  •  auxiliary verb | auxiliary
  •  noun (n.)
  •  interjection
  •  proper noun | proper name
  •  participial adjective
  •  past participle
  •  intransitive
  •  case
  •  pro-form
  •  feminine
  •  agent noun
  •  possessive
  •  pronoun (pron.)
  •  adverbial | adverbially
  •  count noun
  •  prefix
  •  first person
  •  ellipsis | elliptical
  •  non-finite
  •  verbal noun
  •  clause
  •  construed (const., constr.)
  •  conjunction (conj.)
  •  special use
  •  collocation | collocate
  •  double object
  •  unmarked genitive
  •  gender
  •  periphrasis | periphrastic
  •  nominative
  •  subject
  •  postmodify | postmodifier
  •  to-infinitive
  •  accusative
  •  mood
  •  that-clause
  •  base form
  •  copular verb | copula

Overall, a grammatical glossary is a list of grammar terms and their definitions.

Sources:

  1. Glossary of grammatical terms | OED 
  2. glossary: meaning, origin, translation | Word Sense 
  3. Use glossary in a sentence | The best 96 glossary sentence examples | Your Dictionary