Ill-formed (Adjective)
Meaning
Not grammatical; not conforming to the rules of grammar or accepted usage.
Classification
All adjective clusters.
Examples
- The sentence 'Me and my friends went to the movies' is ill-formed because the subject of the sentence should be in the nominative case.
- Her claim that 'The dog chase the cat' is correct was disputed by the linguist due to its ill-formed grammatical structure.
- In the ill-formed phrase 'The man what went there', the relative clause lacks a properly formed verb.
- Their mistake resulted in the creation of an ill-formed sentence that changed the original meaning entirely.
- Although the child spoke an ill-formed version of her mother's native language, her mother still understood her perfectly.