What Are Parts of Speech?

Languages are made up of separate parts of speech, which all work together to create meaningful conversations. Here’s a list of the top 8 parts of speech, with examples to show you how you use them in everyday speech.

• Noun: Names a person, place, thing, idea (Lulu, jail, cantaloupe, loyalty and so on).

• Pronoun: Takes the place of a noun (he, who, I, what and so on).

• Verb: Expresses action or being (scrambled, was, should win and so on).

• Adjective: Modifies a noun or pronoun (messy, strange, alien and so on).

• Adverb: Modifies a verb, adjective or other adverb (willingly, woefully, very and so on).

• Preposition: Relates a noun or a pronoun to another word in the sentence (by, for, from and so on).

• Conjunction: Ties two words or groups of words together (and, after, although and so on).

• Interjection: Expresses strong emotion (yikes! wow! ouch! and so on).