Grammar and Glamour Are the Same Word
Grammar is the system of rules behind a language. In medieval Scots the same word turned into glamour, because learning looked like magic.
Grammar is the set of patterns a language follows: how words change, and how they combine. Its strangest descendant is *glamour*. In the Middle Ages any book-learning smelled of the occult, so *gramarye* came to mean magic, and Scots wore it down into a word for enchantment.
- The rules of a language. *English grammar.*
- A book describing them. *A Latin grammar.*
- Correctness in writing or speech. *Check your grammar.*
- Grammar school — a selective secondary school in Britain. *He went to the local grammar school.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | grammar | Poor grammar. |
| Adjective | grammatical | A grammatical sentence. |
| Adverb | grammatically | Grammatically correct. |
| Person | grammarian | A nineteenth-century grammarian. |
| Opposite | ungrammatical | An ungrammatical phrase. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Her grammar is better than her spelling.Uncountable in this sense.
- The sentence is grammatical but unclear.Grammatical means following the rules, not good.
- He passed the exam for the grammar school.A British school type, selective by test.
What grammar covers
- Syntax — how words are arranged into sentences
- Morphology — how words change form
- Parts of speech — noun, verb, adjective and the rest
- Agreement — matching subject and verb, or noun and adjective
- Usage — what is customary, which is not the same as what is grammatical
From Old French *gramaire*, from Latin *grammatica*, from Greek *grammatike*, the art of letters, from *gramma*, a letter. The Greek root also gives *diagram*, *programme* and *telegram*.
Is grammar the same as usage?
No. Grammar describes the structures a language allows. Usage is what educated speakers actually prefer, which changes faster.
Why is a British grammar school called that?
Because such schools originally taught Latin grammar. The academic selection came centuries later.