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exclamation

UK/ˌɛkskləˈmeɪʃn̩/US/ˌɛkskləˈmeɪʃn̩/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: exclamations

An exclamation is a sudden cry of surprise, anger or delight. Out before you decided to say it.

It has its own punctuation mark, and the advice about exclamation marks is famously strict, since a writer who uses several has spent all the emphasis available. Grammar has the exclamation as a sentence type alongside statements, questions and commands. Words like oh, ouch and wow are interjections, which are exclamations in their purest form, standing entirely outside the sentence.

Definitions of exclamation

  1. 1nounexclamationA sudden cry expressing strong feeling.C1

    “There was an exclamation from the back of the hall.”

Where it comes from

An exclamation is a calling out. Latin exclāmāre joins ex, out, to clāmāre, to call, so the mark at the end of the sentence is there to say the words were shouted.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *kelh₁-

  2. Latin

    exclāmātiō

  3. Middle French

    exclamation

  4. English, today

    exclamation

Built from

  • exclāmō · Latin — to cry out

Borrowed from Middle French exclamation, from Latin exclāmātiō, from exclāmō (“to cry out”) + -tiō.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 39 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

exclamation in the wild

  • The initial marks are mirrored at the end of the sentence or clause by the ordinary question mark ? or exclamation mark !.

    Upside-down question and exclamation marks

  • A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request, command, or suggestion.

    Sentence (linguistics)

  • Question marks and exclamation points that denote a move as bad or good are ubiquitous in chess literature.

    Chess annotation symbols

  • Eureka is an exclamation used to celebrate a discovery or invention.

    Eureka (word)

  • "Holy cow!" (and other similar terms), an exclamation of surprise used mostly in the United States, Canada, Australia, and England, is a minced oath or euphemism.

    Holy cow (expression)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the exclāmō family

exclaim

exclamation — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others