Search results for “sentence”

How do you describe more than one deer, from a perspective of spelling and grammar? It can be a common question among our dear readers, so we'll address it in today's discussion. Let's arrive at the proper plural of deer, as well as how to make sense of similar questions. What Is the Word for …

Michelangelo was a painter. Mr. Yao is a mathematician. Her favorite gifts are roses. In each of these sentences, we have a subject, a verb (more specifically, a linking verb), and another noun. The second noun in each sentence renames or identifies the subject noun (Michelangelo = painter, Mr. Yao = mathematician, gifts = roses). …

Therefore, moreover, and furthermore are curious words in modern English. They appear often enough to make us somewhat familiar with their usage and meaning. At the same time, they are deployed rarely enough (and with a classical feeling) such that we might not always be sure we're using them correctly. That leads us to today's …

Those who speak, write, and study English are typically familiar with how nouns are enhanced by adjectives and other nouns, such as appositives and subject complements. Examples The brown satchel belongs to the lawyer. (adjective describing the subject noun, satchel) Jenna is a lawyer. (subject complement renaming the subject noun, Jenna) My sister Jenna, a …

You might already know that a person who graduates from a school is considered to be an alumnus. But what's the word for several people who have completed their education at an institution? The answer lies in some basic Latin, as we'll discuss. Finding the Correct Plural Version of Alumni Many American grammar conundrums have …

Case in English concerns the function that a word performs in relation to other words in a sentence. In older English, grammar referred to the nominative case (subject), the accusative case (direct object), the dative case (indirect object), and the genitive case (possessive form). (Current English refers more often to three cases: subjective, objective, and …

Let's say you need to speak with a boarding agent about your flight. Or perhaps you're interested in an associate's progress on a project, or you just want to see how a friend's day is coming along. Any of these inquiries might be described as “checking in.” It's an easy concept to understand and to …

Verbs are words that describe a mental or physical action, a state of being, or an occurrence. By doing so, they often give us the most information among the parts of speech in a sentence. A sentence can exist without a noun, but it cannot without a verb. Verb Definitions and Verb Examples A verb's …

The word complement in English means "something that completes or makes perfect; either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole." A subject complement in English describes or renames a sentence subject and completes the sense of the verb by means of an adjective, a noun, a pronoun, a possessive noun or pronoun, …

Way to go! If you're engaging this discussion, you have a sincere interest in understanding how specific parts of speech function in American English. Congrats! An English interjection communicates a writer's or speaker's feeling or focus in emphasizing a statement or drawing someone's attention to it. It is a reaction to someone or something. Interjections …