part of speech

/pɑrt əv spitʃ/

/pɑt əv spitʃ/

Other forms: parts of speech

Every word can be categorized as a part of speech based on its function in a sentence. In English there are usually eight parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and yikes! Interjections.

Dividing words into the parts of speech is a great way to understand how sentences work. In a nutshell, modifiers gotta modify — adjectives modify nouns and pronouns (brown bear), and adverbs modify verbs (runs quickly). Verbs are the heart of the sentence. No sentence is complete without one. Run! (That’s a complete sentence.) Prepositions show a relationship (under, over), and conjunctions (but, and) connect words and phrases. And dang, interjections (wow!) just want to have fun.

Definitions of part of speech

1. noun

   one of the traditional categories of words intended to reflect their functions in a grammatical context
   synonyms: form class, word class

   types:

   major form class

   any of the major parts of speech of traditional grammar

   noun

   the word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition

   verb

   the word class that serves as the predicate of a sentence

   adjective

   the word class that qualifies nouns

   adverb

   the word class that qualifies verbs or clauses

   type of:

   grammatical category, syntactic category

   (grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties