function word

noun

1. a word, as a preposition, article, auxiliary, or pronoun, that chiefly expresses grammatical relationships, has little semantic content of its own, and belongs to a small, closed class of words whose membership is relatively fixed ( content word ).

function word

noun

1. grammar a word, such as the , with a particular grammatical role but little identifiable meaning Compare content word grammatical meaning

Word History and Origins

Origin of function word¹

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

The classic stylometric technique, begun in the late 1980s, was to tabulate the relative frequency of “function words” — words like “by” and “you” and “from” — and then to compare their numbers across manuscripts.

From New York Times

Rather than just vocabulary, the duo homed in on subtle characteristics like the frequency of “function words”—such as “the,” “that,” and “of”—which serve to create relationships between the other words in a sentence.

From Science Magazine

The latest edition of the “New Oxford Shakespeare” has claimed that 17 of the bard’s 44 plays were produced collaboratively, based on an analysis of how his contemporaries used “function words” like “and” or “with”.

From Economist

Prof Pennebaker studied 86 couples and found partners using similar frequencies of function words - articles, conjunctions, and pronouns - were most likely still to be together after three months.

From BBC

He focuses not on content but style, and has found, for example, that the use of function words in a college admissions essay can predict grades.

From Science Magazine