Reading Definitions – Finding the Right Part of Speech to Look Up.

E. Siler

Updated: January 2009

In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, you type a word into the search engine and several choices come up. Since many words in English can be used as different parts of speech, it is important to choose the correct part of speech. Traditionally, there are eight parts of speech: the verb, the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection.

But which one should you look up? Consider these sentences:

1. The question of his honesty dogged his career.

2. The dog’s face showed he had a question.

3. Dogs can’t question! They don’t have voices.

It’s important to look at the words around the word you want to look up – as well as to look at the form of the word you want to look up. These grammatical clues can help you understand which word to look up.

In sentence 1, the word question is preceded by the article the and followed by a preposition of. This indicates it is a noun.

In sentence 1, the word dogged is in the past tense. This indicates the word dog is a verb. It is not an adjective because it is not followed immediately by a noun.

In sentence 2, the word dog’s is in the possessive. This indicates it is a noun.

In sentence 2, the word question is preceded by the article a. This indicates it is a noun.

In sentence 3, the word dog is plural. This indicates it is a noun.

In sentence 3, the word question immediately follows the negative modal can’t. This indicates it is a verb.

Exercise 1: Look up these words and determine how many different parts of speech they can each be. List those parts of speech.

Example: dog (2): noun and verb

A. Whale

B. Book

C. Purchase

D. Cover

E. Police

F. Red

Exercise 2: Look at each of these sentences and determine the part of speech of every word that is underlined. Write some of the grammatical clues that you used.

A. I (a) purchased a beautiful (b) book about (c) whales.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

b. ______________ is a _________ because _________

c. ______________ is a _________ because _________

B. It had a (a) red (b) cover with pictures of (c) whales.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

b. ______________ is a _________ because _________

c. ______________ is a _________ because _________

C. The (a) book describes how men in New Bedford Massachussets (b) whaled in the 19^th century.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

b. ______________ is a _________ because _________

D. My (a) purchase cost me about $120.00, but it was worth it!

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

E. Unfortunately, I had only 100.00 in my checking account, so now my account was in the (a) red.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

F. My mother (a) polices my account online and she really (b) whaled into me when she learned about the (c) purchase.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

b. ______________ is a _________ because _________

c. ______________ is a _________ because _________

G. She said the (a) police would (b) book me into the local jail for writing a bad check.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________

b. ______________ is a _________ because _________

H. Fortunately, she decided to put some extra money into my checking account to (a) cover this --- but I learned my lesson.

a. ______________ is a _________ because _________