Definition of "hypotaxis" []

• Grammar The dependent or subordinate relationship of clauses with connectives. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It is no good trying to issue bans on hypotaxis, or on any other phenomenon, and make them apply to one sex only."
• "As a result, hypotaxis, or syntactic subordination, has a very different role in German, which clearly marks each subordinate clause not only with commas but also by shifting its verb to the very end, so that we can easily tell which clause is describing foreground and which background."
• "Similarly, if you go back and look at what Yeats and his acolytes and influences were doing with Irish literature, you do not find the kind of focus on elaborate hypotaxis that you associate with, say, the Donne moment."