determiner
Americannoun
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determiners
plural
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a person or thing that determines.
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Grammar. a member of a subclass of English limiting adjectival words that usually precede descriptive adjectives and include the articles the, a, and an, and any words that may substitute for them, as your, their, some, and each.
noun
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a word, such as a number, article, possessive adjective, etc, that determines (limits) the meaning of a noun phrase, e.g. their in `their black cat'
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a person or thing that determines
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of determiner
Vocabulary lists containing determiner
Parts of Speech - High School
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Language and Grammar - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It’s the key determiner of living standards: Wages go up as productivity improves.
From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2024
Ridley said the Official Golf World Rankings are "a legitimate determiner of who the best players in the game are" and because the Masters is an invitational event they can "adjust as necessary".
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2024
"Nobody should be the sole determiner of their own biases, but they maintain that," Lubet added.
From Reuters ● Nov. 13, 2023
If you think what's the number one determiner of your income level – it's your parents' income level, right?
From Salon ● Mar. 18, 2023
A determiner answers the question “Which one?” or “How many?”
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
"Supermarket buyers are some of the most powerful determiners of national diet."
From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2016
Their impact is less significant in many developed countries, but they are important determiners of mortality in developing countries.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 25, 2013
Within the nucleus, the chromosomes mysteriously move and divide, ranging themselves in age- old patterns that will serve to distribute the determiners of heredity, the genes, to the daughter cells.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Other common determiners include articles, as in the cat and this boy; quantifiers, as in some nights and all people; and numbers, as in sixteen tons.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
Apparently normality usually means the presence of normal determiners and abnormality, the absence of some essential determiner.
From Being Well-Born An Introduction to Eugenics by Michael F. Guyer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.