| Term | Definition |
| active voice | one of two voices in English; a direct form of expression where the subject performs or "acts" the verb; see also passive voice
eg: "Many people eat rice" |
| adjective | part of speech that typically describes or "modifies" a noun
eg: "It was a big dog." |
| adjective clause | seldom-used term for relative clause |
| adjunct | word or phrase that adds information to a sentence and that can be removed from the sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical
eg: I met John at school. |
| adverb | word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb
eg: quickly, really, very |
| adverbial clause | dependent clause that acts like an adverb and indicates such things as time, place or reason
eg: Although we are getting older, we grow more beautiful each day. |
| affirmative | statement that expresses (or claims to express) a truth or "yes" meaning; opposite of negative
eg: The sun is hot. |
| affix | language unit (morpheme) that occurs before or after (or sometimes within) the root or stem of a word
eg: un- in unhappy (prefix), -ness in happiness (suffix) |
agreement
(also known as "concord") | logical (in a grammatical sense) links between words based on tense, case or number
eg: this phone, these phones |
| antecedent | word, phrase or clause that is replaced by a pronoun (or other substitute) when mentioned subsequently (in the same sentence or later)
eg: "Emily is nice because she brings me flowers." |
| appositive | noun phrase that re-identifies or describes its neighbouring noun
eg: "Canada, a multicultural country, is recognized by its maple leaf flag." |
| article | determiner that introduces a noun phrase as definite (the) or indefinite (a/an) |
| aspect | feature of some verb forms that relates to duration or completion of time; verbs can have no aspect (simple), or can have continuous or progressive aspect (expressing duration), or have perfect or perfective aspect (expressing completion) |
auxiliary verb
(also called "helping verb") | verb used with the main verb to help indicate something such as tense or voice
eg: I do not like you. She has finished. He can swim. |
| bare infinitive | unmarked form of the verb (no indication of tense, mood, person, or aspect) without the particle "to"; typically used after modal auxiliary verbs; see also infinitive
eg: "He should come", "I can swim" |
| base form | basic form of a verb before conjugation into tenses etc
eg: be, speak |
| case | form of a pronoun based on its relationship to other words in the sentence; case can be subjective, objective or possessive
eg: "I love this dog", "This dog loves me", "This is my dog" |
| causative verb | verb that causes things to happen such as "make", "get" and "have"; the subject does not perform the action but is indirectly responsible for it
eg: "She made me go to school", "I had my nails painted" |
| clause | group of words containing a subject and its verb
eg: "It was late when he arrived" |
comparative,
comparative adjective | form of an adjective or adverb made with "-er" or "more" that is used to show differences or similarities between two things (not three or more things)
eg: colder, more quickly |
| complement | part of a sentence that completes or adds meaning to the predicate
eg: Mary did not say where she was going. |
| compound noun | noun that is made up of more than one word; can be one word, or hyphenated, or separated by a space
eg: toothbrush, mother-in-law, Christmas Day |
| compound sentence | sentence with at least two independent clauses; usually joined by a conjunction
eg: "You can have something healthy but you can't have more junk food." |
| concord | another term for agreement |
| conditional | structure in English where one action depends on another ("if-then" or "then-if" structure); most common are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd conditionals
eg: "If I win I will be happy", "I would be happy if I won" |
| conjugate | to show the different forms of a verb according to voice, mood, tense, number and person; conjugation is quite simple in English compared to many other languages
eg: I walk, you walk, he/she/it walks, we walk, they walk; I walked, you walked, he/she/it walked, we walked, they walked |
| conjunction | word that joins or connects two parts of a sentence
eg: Ram likes tea and coffee. Anthony went swimming although it was raining. |
| content word | word that has meaning in a sentence, such as a verb or noun (as opposed to a structure word, such as pronoun or auxiliary verb); content words are stressed in speech
eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME" |
continuous
(also called "progressive") | verb form (specifically an aspect) indicating actions that are in progress or continuing over a given time period (can be past, present or future); formed with "BE" + "VERB-ing"
eg: "They are watching TV." |
| contraction | shortening of two (or more) words into one
eg: isn't (is not), we'd've (we would have) |
| countable noun | thing that you can count, such as apple, pen, tree (see uncountable noun)
eg: one apple, three pens, ten trees |
| dangling participle | illogical structure that occurs in a sentence when a writer intends to modify one thing but the reader attaches it to another
eg: "Running to the bus, the flowers were blooming." (In the example sentence it seems that the flowers were running.) |
| declarative sentence | sentence type typically used to make a statement (as opposed to a question or command)
eg: "Tara works hard", "It wasn't funny" |
defining relative clause
(also called "restrictive relative clause") | relative clause that contains information required for the understanding of the sentence; not set off with commas; see also non-defining clause
eg: "The boy who was wearing a blue shirt was the winner" |
demonstrative pronoun
demonstrative adjective | pronoun or determiner that indicates closeness to (this/these) or distance from (that/those) the speaker
eg: "This is a nice car", "Can you see those cars?" |
| dependent clause | part of a sentence that contains a subject and a verb but does not form a complete thought and cannot stand on its own; see also independent clause
eg: "When the water came out of the tap..." |
| determiner | word such as an article or a possessive adjective or other adjective that typically comes at the beginning of noun phrases
eg: "It was an excellent film", "Do you like my new shirt?", "Let's buy some eggs" |
| direct speech | saying what someone said by using their exact words; see also indirect speech
eg: "Lucy said: 'I am tired.'" |
| direct object | noun phrase in a sentence that directly receives the action of the verb; see also indirect object
eg: "Joey bought the car", "I like it", "Can you see the man wearing a pink shirt and waving a gun in the air?" |
| embedded question | question that is not in normal question form with a question mark; it occurs within another statement or question and generally follows statement structure
eg: "I don't know where he went," "Can you tell me where it is before you go?", "They haven't decided whether they should come" |
| finite verb | verb form that has a specific tense, number and person
eg: I work, he works, we learned, they ran |
| first conditional | "if-then" conditional structure used for future actions or events that are seen as realistic possibilities
eg: "If we win the lottery we will buy a car" |
| fragment | incomplete piece of a sentence used alone as a complete sentence; a fragment does not contain a complete thought; fragments are common in normal speech but unusual (inappropriate) in formal writing
eg: "When's her birthday? - In December", "Will they come? - Probably not" |
| function | purpose or "job" of a word form or element in a sentence
eg: The function of a subject is to perform the action. One function of an adjective is to describe a noun. The function of a noun is to name things. |
future continuous
(also called "future progressive") | tense* used to describe things that will happen in the future at a particular time; formed with WILL + BE + VERB-ing
eg: "I will be graduating in September." |
| future perfect | tense* used to express the past in the future; formed with WILL HAVE + VERB-ed
eg: "I will have graduated by then" |
| future perfect continuous | tense* used to show that something will be ongoing until a certain time in the future; formed with WILL HAVE BEEN + VERB-ing
eg: "We will have been living there for three months by the time the baby is born" |
| future simple | tense* used to describe something that hasn't happened yet such as a prediction or a sudden decision; formed with WILL + BASE VERB
eg: "He will be late", "I will answer the phone" |
| genitive case | case expressing relationship between nouns (possession, origin, composition etc)
eg: "John's dog", "door of the car", "children's songs", "pile of sand" |
| gerund | noun form of a verb, formed with VERB-ing
eg: "Walking is great exercise" |
| gradable adjective | adjective that can vary in intensity or grade when paired with a grading adverb ; see also non-gradable adjective
eg: quite hot, very tall |
| grading adverb | adverb that can modify the intensity or grade of a gradable adjective
eg: quite hot, very tall |
| hanging participle | another term for dangling participle |
| helping verb | another term for auxiliary verb |
| imperative | form of verb used when giving a command; formed with BASE VERB only
eg: "Brush your teeth!" |
| indefinite pronoun | pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. It is vague and "not definite".
eg: anything, each, many, somebody |
independent clause
(also called "main clause") | group of words that expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence; see also dependent clause
eg: "Tara is eating curry.", "Tara likes oranges and Joe likes apples." |
| indirect object | noun phrase representing the person or thing indirectly affected by the action of the verb; see also direct object
eg: "She showed me her book collection", "Joey bought his wife a new car" |
| indirect question | another term for embedded question |
indirect speech
(also called "reported speech") | saying what someone said without using their exact words; see direct speech
eg: "Lucy said that she was tired" |
| infinitive | base form of a verb preceded by "to"**; see also bare infinitive
eg: "You need to study harder", "To be, or not to be: that is the question" |
| inflection | change in word form to indicate grammatical meaning
eg: dog, dogs (two inflections); take, takes, took, taking, taken (five inflections) |
| interjection | common word that expresses emotion but has no grammatical value; can often be used alone and is often followed by an exclamation mark
eg: "Hi!", "er", "Ouch!", "Dammit!" |
| interrogative | (formal) sentence type (typically inverted) normally used when asking a question
eg: "Are you eating?", "What are you eating?" |
| interrogative pronoun | pronoun that asks a question.
eg: who, whom, which |
| intransitive verb | verb that does not take a direct object; see also transitive verb
e.g. "He is working hard", "Where do you live?" |
| inversion | any reversal of the normal word order, especially placing the auxiliary verb before the subject; used in a variety of ways, as in question formation, conditional clauses and agreement or disagreement
eg: "Where are your keys?","Had we watched the weather report, we wouldn't have gone to the beach", "So did he", "Neither did she" |
irregular verb
see irregular verbs list | verb that has a different ending for past tense and past participle forms than the regular "-ed"; see also regular verb
eg: buy, bought, bought; do, did, done |
| lexicon, lexis | all of the words and word forms in a language with meaning or function |
| lexical verb | another term for main verb |
| linking verb | verbs that connect the subject to more information (but do not indicate action), such as "be" or "seem" |
| main clause | another term for independent clause |
main verb
(also called "lexical verb") | any verb in a sentence that is not an auxiliary verb; a main verb has meaning on its own
eg: "Does John like Mary?", "I will have arrived by 4pm" |
modal verb
(also called "modal") | auxiliary verb such as can, could, must, should etc; paired with the bare infinitive of a verb
eg: "I should go for a jog" |
| modifier | word or phrase that modifies and limits the meaning of another word
eg: the house => the white house, the house over there, the house we sold last year |
| mood | sentence type that indicates the speaker's view towards the degree of reality of what is being said, for example subjunctive, indicative, imperative |
| morpheme | unit of language with meaning; differs from "word" because some cannot stand alone
e.g. un-, predict and -able in unpredictable |
| multi-word verb | verb that consists of a basic verb + another word or words (preposition and/or adverb)
eg: get up (phrasal verb), believe in (prepositional verb), get on with (phrasal-prepositional verb) |
| negative | form which changes a "yes" meaning to a "no" meaning; opposite of affirmative
eg: "She will not come", "I have never seen her" |
| nominative case | another term for subjective case |
non-defining relative clause
(also called "non-restrictive relative clause") | relative clause that adds information but is not completely necessary; set off from the sentence with a comma or commas; see defining relative clause
eg: "The boy, who had a chocolate bar in his hand, was still hungry" |
| non-gradable adjective | adjective that has a fixed quality or intensity and cannot be paired with a grading adverb; see also gradable adjective
eg: freezing, boiling, dead |
| non-restrictive relative clause | another term for non-defining relative clause |
| noun | part of speech that names a person, place, thing, quality, quantity or concept; see also proper noun and compound noun
eg: "The man is waiting", "I was born in London", "Is that your car?", "Do you like music?" |
| noun clause | clause that takes the place of a noun and cannot stand on its own; often introduced with words such as "that, who or whoever"
eg: "What the president said was surprising" |
| noun phrase (NP) | any word or group of words based on a noun or pronoun that can function in a sentence as a subject, object or prepositional object; can be one word or many words; can be very simple or very complex
eg: "She is nice", "When is the meeting?", "The car over there beside the lampost is mine" |
| number | change of word form indicating one person or thing (singular) or more than one person or thing (plural)
eg: one dog/three dogs, she/they |
| object | thing or person affected by the verb; see also direct object and indirect object
eg: "The boy kicked the ball", "We chose the house with the red door" |
| objective case | case form of a pronoun indicating an object
eg: "John married her", "I gave it to him" |
| part of speech | one of the classes into which words are divided according to their function in a sentence
eg: verb, noun, adjective |
| participle | verb form that can be used as an adjective or a noun; see past participle, present participle |
| passive voice | one of two voices in English; an indirect form of expression in which the subject receives the action; see also active voice
eg: "Rice is eaten by many people" |
past tense
(also called "simple past") | tense used to talk about an action, event or situation that occurred and was completed in the past
eg: "I lived in Paris for 10 years", "Yesterday we saw a snake" |
| past continuous | tense often used to describe an interrupted action in the past; formed with WAS/WERE + VERB-ing
eg: "I was reading when you called" |
| past perfect | tense that refers to the past in the past; formed with HAD + VERB-ed
eg: "We had stopped the car" |
| past perfect continuous | tense that refers to action that happened in the past and continued to a certain point in the past; formed with HAD BEEN + VERB-ing
eg: "I had been waiting for three hours when he arrived" |
| past participle | verb form (V3) - usually made by adding "-ed" to the base verb - typically used in perfect and passive tenses, and sometimes as an adjective
eg: "I have finished", "It was seen by many people", "boiled eggs" |
| perfect | verb form (specifically an aspect); formed with HAVE/HAS + VERB-ed (present perfect) or HAD + VERB-ed (past perfect) |
| person | grammatical category that identifies people in a conversation; there are three persons: 1st person (pronouns I/me, we/us) is the speaker(s), 2nd person (pronoun you) is the listener(s), 3rd person (pronouns he/him, she/her, it, they/them) is everybody or everything else |
| personal pronoun | pronoun that indicates person
eg: "He likes my dogs", "They like him" |
| phrasal verb | multi-word verb formed with a verb + adverb
eg: break up, turn off (see phrasal verbs list)
NB: many people and books call all multi-word verbs "phrasal verbs" (see multi-word verbs) |
| phrase | two or more words that have a single function and form part of a sentence; phrases can be noun, adjective, adverb, verb or prepositional |
| plural | of a noun or form indicating more than one person or thing; plural nouns are usually formed by adding "-s"; see also singular, number
eg: bananas, spoons, trees |
| position | grammatically correct placement of a word form in a phrase or sentence in relation to other word forms
eg: "The correct position for an article is at the beginning of the noun phrase that it describes" |
| positive | basic state of an adjective or adverb when it shows quality but not comparative or superlative
eg: nice, kind, quickly |
| possessive adjective | adjective (also called "determiner") based on a pronoun: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
eg: "I lost my keys", "She likes your car" |
| possessive case | case form of a pronoun indicating ownership or possession
eg: "Mine are blue", "This car is hers" |
| possessive pronoun | pronoun that indicates ownership or possession
eg: "Where is mine?", "These are yours" |
| predicate | one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of a sentence; the predicate is the part that is not the subject
eg: "My brother is a doctor", "Who did you call?", "The woman wearing a blue dress helped me" |
| prefix | affix that occurs before the root or stem of a word
eg: impossible, reload |
| preposition | part of speech that typically comes before a noun phrase and shows some type of relationship between that noun phrase and another element (including relationships of time, location, purpose etc)
eg: "We sleep at night", "I live in London", "This is for digging" |
| prepositional verb | multi-word verb that is formed with verb + preposition
eg: believe in, look after |
| present participle | -ing form of a verb (except when it is a gerund or verbal noun)
eg: "We were eating", "The man shouting at the back is rude", "I saw Tara playing tennis" |
| present simple (also called "simple present") | tense usually used to describe states and actions that are general, habitual or (with the verb "to be") true right now; formed with the basic verb (+ s for 3rd person singular)
eg: "Canada sounds beautiful", "She walks to school", "I am very happy" |
| present continuous (also called "present progressive") | tense used to describe action that is in process now, or a plan for the future; formed with BE + VERB-ing
eg: "We are watching TV", "I am moving to Canada next month" |
| present perfect | tense that connects the past and the present, typically used to express experience, change or a continuing situation; formed with HAVE + VERB-ed
eg: "I have worked there", "John has broken his leg", "How long have you been in Canada?" |
| present perfect continuous | tense used to describe an action that has recently stopped or an action continuing up to now; formed with HAVE + BEEN + VERB-ing
eg: "I'm tired because I've been running", "He has been living in Canada for two years" |
| progressive | another term for continuous |
| pronoun | word that replaces a noun or noun phrase; there are several types including personal pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns
eg: you, he, him; who, which; somebody, anything |
| proper noun | noun that is capitalized at all times and is the name of a person, place or thing
eg: Shakespeare, Tokyo, EnglishClub.com |
| punctuation | standard marks such as commas, periods and question marks within a sentence
eg: , . ? ! - ; : |
| quantifier | determiner or pronoun that indicates quantity
eg: some, many, all |
| question tag | final part of a tag question; mini-question at end of a tag question
eg: "Snow isn't black, is it?" |
| question word | another term for WH-word |
| reciprocal pronoun | pronoun that indicates that two or more subjects are acting mutually; there are two in English - each other, one another
eg: "John and Mary were shouting at each other", "The students accused one another of cheating" |
reduced relative clause
(also called "participial relative clause") | construction similar to a relative clause, but containing a participle instead of a finite verb; this construction is possible only under certain circumstances
eg: "The woman sitting on the bench is my sister", "The people arrested by the police have been released" |
| reflexive pronoun | pronoun ending in -self or -selves, used when the subject and object are the same, or when the subject needs emphasis
eg: "She drove herself", "I'll phone her myself" |
regular verb
see regular verbs list | verb that has "-ed" as the ending for past tense and past participle forms; see also irregular verb
eg: work, worked, worked |
| relative adverb | adverb that introduces a relative clause; there are four in English: where, when, wherever, whenever; see also relative pronoun |
| relative clause | dependent clause that usually starts with a relative pronoun such as who or which, or relative adverb such as where
eg: "The person who finishes first can leave early" (defining), "Texas, where my brother lives, is big" (non-defining) |
| relative pronoun | pronoun that starts a relative clause; there are five in English: who, whom, whose, which, that; see also relative adverb |
| reported speech | another term for indirect speech |
| restrictive relative clause | another term for defining relative clause |
| second conditional | "if-then" conditional structure used to talk about an unlikely possibility in the future
eg: "If we won the lottery we would buy a car" |
| sentence | largest grammatical unit; a sentence must always include a subject (except for imperatives) and predicate; a written sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop/period (.), question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!); a sentence contains a complete thought such as a statement, question, request or command
eg: "Stop!", "Do you like coffee?", "I work." |
| series | list of items in a sentence
eg: "The children ate popsicles, popcorn and chips" |
| singular | of a noun or form indicating exactly one person or thing; singular nouns are usually the simplest form of the noun (as found in a dictionary); see also plural, number
eg: banana, spoon, tree |
| split infinitive | situation where a word or phrase comes between the particle "to" and the verb in an infinitive; considered poor construction by some
eg: "He promised to never lie again" |
| Standard English (S.E.) | "normal" spelling, pronunciation and grammar that is used by educated native speakers of English |
| structure word | word that has no real meaning in a sentence, such as a pronoun or auxiliary verb (as opposed to a content word, such as verb or noun); structure words are not normally stressed in speech
eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME" |
| subject | one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of a sentence; the subject is the part that is not the predicate; typically, the subject is the first noun phrase in a sentence and is what the rest of the sentence "is about"
eg: "The rain water was dirty", "Mary is beautiful", "Who saw you?" |
subjective case
also called "nominative" | case form of a pronoun indicating a subject
eg: Did she tell you about her? |
| subjunctive | fairly rare verb form typically used to talk about events that are not certain to happen, usually something that someone wants, hopes or imagines will happen; formed with BARE INFINITIVE (except past of "be")
eg: "The President requests that John attend the meeting" |
| subordinate clause | another term for dependent clause |
| suffix | affix that occurs after the root or stem of a word
eg: happiness, quickly |
| superlative, superlative adjective | adjective or adverb that describes the extreme degree of something
eg: happiest, most quickly |
| SVO | subject-verb-object; a common word order where the subject is followed by the verb and then the object
eg: "The man crossed the street" |
| syntax | sentence structure; the rules about sentence structure |
| tag question | special construction with statement that ends in a mini-question; the whole sentence is a tag question; the mini-question is a question tag; usually used to obtain confirmation
eg: "The Earth is round, isn't it?", "You don't eat meat, do you?" |
| tense | form of a verb that shows us when the action or state happens (past, present or future). Note that the name of a tense is not always a guide to when the action happens. The "present continuous tense", for example, can be used to talk about the present or the future. |
| third conditional | "if-then" conditional structure used to talk about a possible event in the past that did not happen (and is therefore now impossible)
eg: "If we had won the lottery we would have bought a car" |
| transitive verb | action verb that has a direct object (receiver of the action); see also intransitive verb
eg: "The kids always eat a snack while they watch TV" |
uncountable nouns
(also called "mass nouns" or "non-count") | thing that you cannot count, such as substances or concepts; see also countable nouns
eg: water, furniture, music |
| usage | way in which words and constructions are normally used in any particular language |
| V1, V2, V3 | referring to Verb 1, Verb 2, Verb 3 - being the base, past and past participle that students typically learn for irregular verbs
eg: speak, spoke, spoken |
| verb | word that describes the subject's action or state and that we can change or conjugate based on tense and person
eg: (to) work, (to) love, (to) begin |
| voice | form of a verb that shows the relation of the subject to the action; there are two voices in English: active, passive |
| WH-question | question using a WH-word and expecting an answer that is not "yes" or "no"; WH-questions are "open" questions; see also yes-no question
eg: Where are you going? |
WH-word
(also called "question word") | word that asks a WH-question; there are 7 WH-words: who, what, where, when, which, why, how |
| word order | order or sequence in which words occur within a sentence; basic word order for English is subject-verb-object or SVO |
| yes-no question | question to which the answer is yes or no; yes-no questions are "closed" questions;
eg: "Do you like coffee?" |
| zero conditional | "if-then" conditional structure used when the result of the condition is always true (based on fact)
eg: "If you dial O, the operator comes on" |
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