word order

American  

noun

1. the way in which words are arranged in sequence in a sentence or smaller construction.

   In Latin, word order is freer than in English.

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word order British  

noun

1. the arrangement of words in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In many languages, including English, word order plays an important part in determining meanings expressed in other languages by inflections

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Etymology

Origin of word order

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

word order

These include word order preferences, such as whether verbs come before or after objects, and hierarchical structures, such as how grammatical relationships are marked within sentences.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 5, 2026

Several researchers noted “more short sentences, confused word order, and repetition, alongside extended digressions.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2024

Nordlinger and Kidd suspect that when someone speaks a language that has a truly free word order, they are under pressure to swiftly make decisions about the sentence they will say.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 18, 2023

A last option to consider is that the Yoda species is in some way hard-wired for object-subject-verb word order.

From Slate ● Dec. 4, 2019

It’s just one way to display syntax on a page, and not a particularly good one, with user-unfriendly features such as scrambled word order and arbitrary graphical conventions.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker