interjection
nounUK /ɪn.təˈdʒɛk.ʃən/ · US /ˌɪn.tɚˈd͡ʒɛk.ʃən/
Etymology From Middle English interjeccioun, from Old French interjection (13th century), from Latin interiectiōnem, accusative singular of interiectiō (“throwing or placing between; interjection”), perfect passive participle of intericiō (“throw or place between”), from inter (“between”) + iaciō (“throw”). Displaced Old English betwēoxāworpennes (literally “between-thrown-out-ness”), a calque of the Latin.
1
Grammar, Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences An exclamation or filled pause; a word or phrase with no particular grammatical relation to a sentence, often an expression of emotion.
- 322. The parts of speech which are neither declined nor conjugated, are called by the general name of particles. 323. They are adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.1844, E. A. Andrews, First Lessions in Latin; or Introduction to Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar, 6th edition, Boston, page 91:
- Some evidence confirming our suspicions that topicalised and dislocated constituents occupy different sentence positions comes from Greenberg (1984). He notes that in colloquial speech the interjection man can occur after dislocated constituents, but not after topicalised constituents: cf. (21) (a) Bill, man, I really hate him (dislocated NP) (21) (b) ^✽Bill, man, I really hate (topicalised NP)1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 10, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 533:
2
An interruption; something interjected
- Mnuchin, asked about climate change in a CNBC interview after his comments about Thunberg, argued there were bigger issues that also needed to be addressed. When a host noted clean air rules as an example of something that might be more urgent, Mnuchin ignored the interjection.2020 January 23, Philip Bump, “Mnuchin said Thunberg needed to study economics before offering climate proposals. So we talked to an economist.”, in Washington Post:
- Synonyms
- exclamation, interj, interj., insertion, interpolation, intercalation
- Derived terms
- interjectionary, interjection point, note of interjection
- Related terms
- interject, interjectional, interjectory, vocative