WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2026
re′write•rule′, [Ling.]
- a phrase-structure rule in a generative grammar, shown as an instruction to replace or rewrite a single symbol, representing a syntactic structure, on the left with one or more symbols, representing the constituents of the structure, on the right, as in S → NP + VP, where S (sentence) is to be replaced with its constituents NP (noun phrase) and VP (verb phrase).