part of speech Definition

parts of speech
1. grammar.
Any of the grammatical classes of words, eg noun, adjective, verb or preposition. See note.

Words that make up sentences can be grouped into different classes according to their function or role. For example, words such as cat, car, Thomas and Liverpool are nouns, ie words that name things, people and places, whereas words such as big, black and angry are adjectives, ie words that describe people and things.

Traditionally, English is said to have eight, or sometimes nine, word classes or parts of speech:

noun: book, bread;

verb: sing, walk;

adjective: green, sad;

adverb: quickly, soon, very;

pronoun: I, us, you;

preposition: in, from, with;

conjunction: although, because, while;

interjection: ouch, alas, oh;

and sometimes also

article: the, a.

In some modern grammars and dictionaries of English, several of these traditional parts of speech have been replaced or supplemented by others such as determiner and intensifier.

Note that many words belong to more than one part of speech. For example, can is a noun in a can of worms, an auxiliary verb in I can come tomorrow, and a lexical verb in a factory where they can tomatoes.