English in Use/Glossary

Absolute &mdash; Not immediately dependent on the other parts of the sentence in government.

Abstract &mdash; Considered apart from any application to a particular object.

Abstract noun &mdash; A noun that denotes an idea, emotion, feeling, quality or other abstract or intangible concept.

Active verb &mdash; A verb that expresses action as distinct from mere existence or state.

Adjective &mdash; A word that modifies a noun or describes a noun’s referent.

Adjunct &mdash; A clause in a sentence that amplifies its meaning.

Adverb &mdash; A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or various other types of words, phrases, and clauses.

Adverb of cause &mdash; Adverbs of cause are why, wherefore and therefore.

Adverb of degree &mdash; Adverbs of degree are those which answer to the question, how much? how little? or to the idea of more or less.

Adverb of manner &mdash; Adverbs of manner are those which answer to the question, how? or, by affirming, denying, or doubting, show how a subject is regarded.

Adverb of place &mdash; Adverbs of place indicate where something happens.

Adverb of time &mdash; Adverbs of time are those which answer to the question, when? how long? how soon? or how often?

Affirmative &mdash; An answer that shows agreement or acceptance.

Agreement &mdash; Rules that exist in many languages that force some parts of a sentence to be used or inflected differently depending on certain attributes of other parts.

Antecedent &mdash; A word, phrase or clause referred to by a pronoun.

Aorist &mdash; A temporal feature of the verb which denotes the speaker's standpoint of the event described by the verb, as from outside of the event and seeing it as a completed whole.

Aphaeresis &mdash; The loss of letters or sounds from the beginning of a word, such as the development of special from especial.

Apocope &mdash; The loss or omission of a sound or syllable from the end of a word.

Apposition &mdash; A construction in which one noun or noun phrase is placed with another as an explanatory equivalent, both having the same syntactic function in the sentence.

Appositive &mdash; Of or being in apposition.

Archaism &mdash; The adoption or imitation of archaic words or style.

Arrangement &mdash; Relative position of words in a sentence.

Article &mdash; A part of speech that indicates, specifies and limits a noun (a, an, or the in English).

Attribute &mdash; A word that qualifies a noun.

Auxiliary &mdash; A verb that accompanies the main verb in a clause in order to make distinctions in tense, mood, voice or aspect.

Capital &mdash; An uppercase letter.

Cardinal adjective &mdash; A cardinal number used as an adjective.

Case &mdash; A category of nouns, pronouns, or adjectives, specialized (usually by inflection) to indicate a particular syntactic relation to other words in a sentence.

Clause &mdash; A word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate.

Collective noun &mdash; A noun which, though singular, refers to a group of things or animals.

Common adjective &mdash; A common adjective is any ordinary epithet, or adjective denoting quality or situation: as, good, bad, peaceful, warlike, eastern, western, outer, inner.

Common noun &mdash; A noun that can be preceded by an indefinite article, and denotes any member, or all members of a class; an ordinary noun such as dog or city.

Comparative degree &mdash; Adverbial or adjectival forms modified by more or ending in er, used when comparing two things.

Comparison &mdash; The ability of adjectives and adverbs to form three degrees.

Compound &mdash; A lexeme that consists of more than one stem; for example laptop, formed from lap and top.

Compound adjective &mdash; A compound adjective is one that consists of two or more words joined together, either by the hyphen or solidly: as, nut-brown, laughter-loving, four-footed; threefold, lordlike, lovesick.

Compound personal &mdash; A compound personal pronoun. compound personal pronouns are myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself.

Compound relative &mdash; Compound relatives are whoever, whosoever, whichever, whichsoever, whatever, whatsoever.

Compound sentence &mdash; A compound sentence is a sentence which is composed of at least two independent clauses.

Conjugation &mdash; In some languages, one of several classifications of verbs according to what inflections they take.

Conjunction &mdash; A word used to join other words or phrases together into sentences.

Conjunctive adverb &mdash; An adverb that connects two clauses.

Consonant &mdash; A sound that results from the passage of air through restrictions of the oral cavity; any sound that is not the dominant sound of a syllable, the dominant sound generally being a vowel.

Continuous tense &mdash; Expressing an ongoing action or state.

Declension &mdash; A way of categorizing nouns, pronouns, or adjectives according to the inflections they receive.

Defective verb &mdash; A verb with an incomplete conjugation; for example, one that can only be conjugated in certain persons and numbers.

Definite article &mdash; An article that introduces a noun and specifies it as the particular noun that is being considered; in English, the only definite article is the.

Diaeresis &mdash; A diacritic placed over a vowel letter indicating that it is sounded separately, usually forming a distinct syllable, as in naïve, Noël, Brontë.

Ellipsis &mdash; The omission of a grammatically required word or phrase that can be implied.

Enallage &mdash; The substitution of one grammatical form for another one.

Finite verb &mdash; A verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs.

First-future tense &mdash; The first-future tense is that which expresses what will take place hereafter.

Gender &mdash; A division of nouns and pronouns (and sometimes of other parts of speech), such as masculine, feminine, neuter or common.

Gerund &mdash; A verbal form that functions as a verbal noun. In English, a gerund has the same spelling as a present participle, but functions differently.

Government &mdash; That power which one word has over another, to cause it to assume some particular modification.

Grammar &mdash; A system of rules and principles for speaking and writing a language.

Hyperbaton &mdash; An inversion of the usual or logical order of words or phrases, for emphasis or poetic effect.

Imperative mood &mdash; The grammatical mood expressing an order.

Indefinite article &mdash; A word preceding a noun to indicate that the noun is new or unknown. In English it can be a (before a consonant sound) or an (before a vowel sound) in the singular; in the plural an article isn't used at all, or the pronoun some is used instead.

Independent clause &mdash; A clause that can stand by itself as a grammatically viable simple sentence.

Indicative mood &mdash; The mood of a verb used in ordinary factual or objective statements.

Infinitive &mdash; The uninflected form of a verb. In English, this is usually formed with the verb stem preceded by 'to'.

Infinitive mood &mdash; The infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to.

Inflection &mdash; A change in the form of a word that reflects a change in grammatical function.

Interjection &mdash; An exclamation or filled pause; a word or phrase with no particular grammatical relation to a sentence, often an expression of emotion.

Interrogative &mdash; A word (pronoun, pronominal adjective, or adverb) implying interrogation, or used for asking a question: why, who, when, etc.

Introductory phrase &mdash; A phrase or clause that introduces a sentence.

Irregular comparison &mdash; Comparison of adjectives which cannot be compared regularly.

Irregular verb &mdash; A verb that does not follow the normal rules for its conjugation.

Italic characters &mdash; A typeface in which the letters slant to the right.

Letter &mdash; A symbol in an alphabet.

Liquid &mdash; An l or r sound.

Mimesis &mdash; The representation of aspects of the real world, especially human actions, in literature and art.

Mood &mdash; A verb form that depends on how its containing clause relates to the speaker’s or writer’s wish, intent, or assertion about reality.

Morphology &mdash; The forms of word formation.

Multiplicative adjective &mdash; An adjective which expresses the multiplicity.

Mute &mdash; A letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation.

Neuter verb &mdash; A verb that expresses neither action nor passion, but simply being, or a state of being.

Nominative &mdash; Giving a name; naming; designating; said of that case or form of a noun which stands as the subject of a finite verb.

Non-finite verb &mdash; A verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person.

Note of exclamation &mdash; Punctuation used to denote excitement, surprise or shock; exclamation point.

Note of interrogation &mdash; The punctuation mark "?", used at the end of a sentence to indicate a question.

Noun &mdash; A word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or idea; one of the basic parts of speech in many languages, including English.

Number &mdash; Of a word or phrase, the state of being singular, dual or plural, shown by inflection.

Numeral &mdash; A numeral adjective.

Numeral adjective &mdash; An adjective that expresses a definite number: as, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Object &mdash; The noun phrase which is an internal complement of a verb phrase or a prepositional phrase. In a verb phrase with a transitive action verb, it is typically the receiver of the action.

Objective &mdash; Of, or relating to a noun or pronoun used as the object of a verb.

Ordinal adjective &mdash; An ordinal number used as an adjective.

Paragoge &mdash; The addition of a sound, syllable or letter to the end of a word, either through natural development or as a grammatical function.

Parenthetical phrase &mdash; A phrase in the sentence which is not essential to the meaning of the sentence.

Parsing &mdash; To resolve into its elements, as a sentence, pointing out the several parts of speech, and their relation to each other by government or agreement; to analyze and describe grammatically.

Participial adjective &mdash; A participle used as an adjective, such as drowning in the drowning man and drowned in the drowned man.

Participle &mdash; A form of a verb that may function as an adjective or noun.

Part of speech &mdash; The function a word or phrase performs in a sentence or phrase.

Passive voice &mdash; A grammatical voice in which the subject receives the action of a transitive verb.

Past participle &mdash; A past participle is usually identical to the verb's past tense form, though in irregular verbs the two usually differ.

Past perfect tense &mdash; Tense of verb conjugated by adding had before the past participle of a verb.

Perfect tense &mdash; A tense that expresses action completed at the present time; in English it is formed by using the present tense of have with a past participle.

Period &mdash; The punctuation mark (“.”) indicating the end of a sentence or marking an abbreviation.

Person &mdash; A linguistic category used to distinguish between the speaker of an utterance and those to whom or about whom he is referring; implemented in most languages by a variety of pronouns.

Personal &mdash; Denoting person; as, a personal pronoun.

Personification &mdash; A figure of speech, prosopopeia, in which an inanimate object or an abstraction is given human qualities.

Phrase &mdash; A word or group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence, usually consisting of a head, or central word, and elaborating words.

Pleonasm &mdash; A phrase in which one or more words are redundant as their meaning is expressed elsewhere in the phrase.

Plural &mdash; A word in the form in which it potentially refers to something other than one person or thing; and other than two things if the language has a dual form.

Possessive &mdash; A pronoun in the possessive case.

Potential mood &mdash; A verbal construction or form stating something is possible or probable.

Predicate &mdash; The part of the sentence (or clause) which states something about the subject.

Prefix &mdash; That which is prefixed; especially one or more letters or syllables added to the beginning of a word to modify its meaning; as, pre in prefix, con in conjure.

Preposition &mdash; A closed class of non-inflecting words typically employed to connect a noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word.

Propositional phrase &mdash; A phrase that has both a preposition and its object or complement; may be used as an adjunct or a modifier.

Present participle &mdash; The present participle is identical in form to the gerund.

Present tense &mdash; The form of language used to refer to an event, transaction, or occurrence which is happening now (or at the present time), or an object that currently exists.

Preterit &mdash; The preterite tense, simple past tense: the grammatical tense that determines the specific initiation or termination of an action in the past.

Progressive form &mdash; A form of a verb in which its gerund (or present participle) is used with any form of the verb to be. Examples: I am defining. It had been snowing.

Pronominal &mdash; Of, pertaining to, resembling, or functioning as a pronoun.

Pronominal compound &mdash; An adjective herein, therein, wherein.

Pronoun &mdash; A type of noun that refers anaphorically to another noun or noun phrase, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by a determiner and rarely takes an attributive adjective.

Proper adjective &mdash; An adjective derived from a proper noun, such as British derived from Britain.

Proper noun &mdash; The name of a particular person, place, organization or other individual entity.

Prosthesis &mdash; The prepending of phonemes at the beginning of a word without changing its morphological structure, as in nother from other.

Quotation &mdash; A fragment of a human expression that is being referred to by somebody else.

Radical &mdash; Of or pertaining to the root of a word.

Redundant verb &mdash; A verb which has two forms for past tense.

Regimen &mdash; A syntactical relation between words, as when one depends on another and is regulated by it in respect to case or mood; government.

Regular comparison &mdash; Adjectives are regularly compared, when the comparative degree is expressed by adding er, and the superlative, by adding est to them.

Regular verb &mdash; A verb which conjugates regularly. In English, a verb which uses an ed suffix to form its past participle.

Relation &mdash; Reference of word to other words.

Relative &mdash; A relative pronoun. Relative pronouns are who, which, what, that, whoever, whosoever, whichever, whichsoever, whatever, whatsoever.

Remote &mdash; Not directly related.

Roman characters &mdash; A serifed style of typeface. Upright, as opposed to italic.

Second-future tense &mdash; The second-future tense is that which expresses what will have taken place at some future time mentioned.

Semivowel &mdash; A sound in speech which has some qualities of a consonant and some qualities of a vowel. A letter which represents a semivowel sound, such as w or y in English.

Sentence &mdash; A grammatically complete series of words consisting of a subject and predicate, even if one or the other is implied, and typically beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop.

Sign &mdash; An auxiliary, suffix, etc. that modifies a word.

Small letters &mdash; The minuscule or small letters (a, b, c, as opposed to the uppercase or capital letters, A, B, C).

Subject &mdash; The word or word group (usually a noun phrase) that is dealt with. In active clauses with verbs denoting an action, the subject and the actor are usually the same.

Subjunctive mood &mdash; A verb inflected to indicate that an act or state of being is possible, contingent or hypothetical, and not a fact.

Superlative degree &mdash; The form of an adjective that expresses which of more than two items has the highest degree of the quality expressed by the adjective; in English, formed by appending est to the end of the adjective (for some short adjectives only) or putting most before it.

Supposition &mdash; An assumption, conjecture, speculation or something supposed.

Syllepsis &mdash; A figure of speech in which one word simultaneously modifies two or more other words such that the modification must be understood differently with respect to each modified word; often causing humorous incongruity.

Synaeresis &mdash; The contraction of two vowels into a diphthong or a long vowel.

Syncope &mdash; A missing sound from the interior of a word, for example by changing cannot to can't or Hawai'i from the root name Hawaiki.

Syntax &mdash; A set of rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.

Tense &mdash; Any of the forms of a verb which distinguish when an action or state of being occurs or exists.

Thing sui generis &mdash; In a class of its own; one of a kind.

Tmesis &mdash; The insertion of one or more words between the components of a compound word.

Understood words &mdash; Words that are omitted by ellipsis.

Unstressed numeral &mdash; A numeral in which one is replaced with indefinite article.

Verb &mdash; A word that indicates an action, an event, or a state.

Verbal &mdash; A verb form which does not function as a predicate, or a word derived from a verb.

Voice &mdash; A particular mode of inflecting or conjugating verbs, or a particular form of a verb, by means of which is indicated the relation of the subject of the verb to the action which the verb expresses.

Vowel &mdash; A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable. A letter representing the sound of vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.