der·i·va·tion (d r  -v  shn)n. 1. The act or process of deriving. 2. The state or fact of being derived; originating: a custom of recent derivation. 3. Something derived; a derivative. 4. The form or source from which something is derived; an origin. 5. The historical origin and development of a word; an etymology. 6. Linguistics a. The process by which words are formed from existing words or bases by adding affixes, as singer from sing or undo from do, by changing the shape of the word or base, as song from sing, or by adding an affix and changing the pronunciation of the word or base, as electricity from electric. b. A linguistic description of the process of word formation. c. In generative linguistics, the process by which a surface structure is generated from a deep structure. d. A formal representation or description of the series of ordered linguistic rules and operations that generate a surface structure from a deep structure. 7. Logic & Mathematics A logical or mathematical process indicating through a sequence of statements that a result such as a theorem or a formula necessarily follows from the initial assumptions. der i·vation·al adj. |
ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
| Adj. | 1. | derivational - characterized by inflections indicating a semantic relation between a word and its base; "the morphological relation between `sing' and `singer' and `song' is derivational" inflectional - characterized by inflections indicating grammatical distinctions; "inflectional morphology is used to indicate number and case and tense and person etc." |
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