PARTS OF SPEECH

PARTS OF SPEECH

Here is a brief explanation of what the parts of speech are:

Noun	A noun is a naming word. It names a person, place, thing, idea, living creature, quality, or action. Examples: cowboy, theatre, box, thought, tree, kindness, arrival
Verb	A verb is a word which describes an action (doing something) or a state (being something). Examples: walk, talk, think, believe, live, like, want
Adjective	An adjective is a word that describes a noun. It tells you something about the noun. Examples: big, yellow, thin, amazing, beautiful, quick, important
Adverb	An adverb is a word which usually describes a verb. It tells you how something is done. It may also tell you when or where something happened. Examples: slowly, intelligently, well, yesterday, tomorrow, here, everywhere
Pronoun	A pronoun is used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
Conjunction	A conjunction joins two words, phrases or sentences together. Examples: but, so, and, because, or
Preposition	A preposition usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. It joins the noun to some other part of the sentence. Examples: on, in, by, with, under, through, at
Interjection	An interjection is an unusual kind of word, because it often stands alone. Interjections are words which express emotion or surprise, and they are usually followed by exclamation marks. Examples: Ouch!, Hello!, Hurray!, Oh no!, Ha!
Article	An article is used to introduce a noun. Examples: the, a, an

Parts of Speech Table

This is a summary of the 8 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of speech.

part of speech	function or "job"	example words	example sentences
Verb	action or state	(to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must	EnglishClub.com is a web site. I like EnglishClub.com.
Noun	thing or person	pen, dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John	This is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.
Adjective	describes a noun	a/an, the, 2, some, good, big, red, well, interesting	I have two dogs. My dogs are big. I like big dogs.
Adverb	describes a verb, adjective or adverb	quickly, silently, well, badly, very, really	My dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.
Pronoun	replaces a noun	I, you, he, she, some	Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
Preposition	links a noun to another word	to, at, after, on, but	We went to school on Monday.
Conjunction	joins clauses or sentences or words	and, but, when	I like dogs and I like cats. I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.
Interjection	short exclamation, sometimes inserted into a sentence	oh!, ouch!, hi!, well	Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well, I don't know.

* Some grammar sources categorize English into 9 or 10 parts of speech. At EnglishClub.com, we use the traditional categorization of 8 parts of speech. Examples of other categorizations are:

• Verbs may be treated as two different parts of speech:
• Lexical Verbs (work, like, run)
• Auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
• Determiners may be treated as a separate part of speech, instead of being categorized under Adjectives