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
