inflector

noun

1. An affix that inflects the base form of a word.

   “These modulants are inflectors of roots to allow them to serve as descriptors, and modulation is desirable because the root form may be retrieved without the modulant when making a generic search.”

   “The inflectors of English are relatively few in number, so each has quite a high frequency of occurrence.”

   “This is an observation I make in Jefferies (1990) in connection with certain allomorphs of the copulative, 'possessive' and some of the adverbialising prefixes in Shona, where, again, these inflectors depend on 'their' stems for vowel shape and how their underlying high tones are realised.”

2. A device for bending a particle beam.

   “In order to prevent the beams striking the inflectors on subsequent turns, each ring would contain a set of foils, thick at the outer radius but thinning to zero about one inch inside the inflector radius.”

   “The introduction of electrons into the chamber is accomplished by means of an iron antimagnetic channel with subsequent bending by electrically pulsed inflectors.”

   “Although various type of inflectors are possible (see S 4.1), the choice was made on an electrostatic mirror for reason of simplicity and compactness.”

3. A muscle that contracts to cause a part of the body to curve inwards.

   “The two last, the intertransversarii and quadrati lumborum, are here enumerated with the dorsal inflectors, because the are dorsad of the centre of motion, and accordingly relaxed in the dead body, when the trunk is inflected in the dorsal direction.”

   “The scateni medii appear to act exclusively as lateral inflectors.”

   “Besides, lightness, toughness, and elasticity are the qualities of the skeleton most essential to the shark : to yield to the contraction of the lateral inflectors, and aid in the recoil, are the functions which the spine is mainly required to fulfil in the act of locomotion, and to which its alternating elastic balls of fluid, and semi-ossified bi-concave vertebrae, so admirably adapt it.”

4. Something that inflects or modulates.

   “Since, in general, bodies that are good radiators are poor inflectors and good absorbers, and vice versa.,”

   “And so, while it wouldn't be quite proper to call estrogen a neurotransmitter, it would be proper to call it and the neurotransmitters members of a large chemical family of neuromodulators—brain inflectors.”

   “The third category is bloggers as amplifiers and inflectors of news, notably by extending discussion and debate in the blogosphere.”