subordinate clause

American  

noun

Grammar.

1. a clause that modifies the principal clause or some part of it or that serves a noun function in the principal clause, as when she arrived in the sentence I was there when she arrived or that she has arrived in the sentence I doubt that she has arrived.

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subordinate clause British  

noun

1. grammar a clause with an adjectival, adverbial, or nominal function, rather than one that functions as a separate sentence in its own right Compare coordinate clause main clause

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Example Sentences

I still see those branching sentence diagrams in my head when I am constructing subordinate clauses.

From The New Yorker

A subordinate clause to these statements, drawn from Pages 9 and 10 of the Mueller report, would help illuminate the troubling reasons Mueller postulated for his findings of insufficient evidence:

From Washington Post

“One yearns for a subordinate clause, a compound-complex sentence being too much to hope for,” he observed.

From Washington Post

“I had to take out a lot of subordinate clauses out and write more independent statements, to build through parataxis. I had to shift the complexity from the syntax to images.”

From New York Times

The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2002, and she considered her translation — which mirrored Sebald’s labyrinthine German sentences, peppered with subordinate clauses — among her finest achievements, her son said.

From Washington Post