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Hint
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Example
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Answer
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(part of speech) A word that modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes a noun’s referent.
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The portions at the burger joint were humongous.
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A
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Adjective
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(part of speech) A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or various other types of words, phrases, or clauses.
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Farley greedily scarfed up all the leftover spaghetti.
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A
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Adverb
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A verb that accompanies the main verb in a clause in order to make distinctions in tense, mood, voice or aspect.
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You should receive your Form W-2 by the end of January.
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A | H
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Auxiliary | Helper | Helping verb
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A sentence that contains an independent clause as well as one or more dependent clauses, such as a relative clause, an adverbial clause, or a noun clause.
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Despite not yet having a driver’s license, Kimmie often borrowed the family car when her parents went out with the neighbors.
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C
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Complex sentence
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A sentence that has two or more independent clauses, joined by a conjunction (such as 'but', 'and') and/or punctuation (such as ',').
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Durward spoils the ending of every single whodunit I start to read, although I’ve asked him not to.
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C
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Compound sentence
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(part of speech) A word used to join other words or phrases together into sentences, and which shows how the two joined parts are related.
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You must either roll doubles or go to jail.
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C
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Conjunction
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A shortened form of a word or word phrase, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark.
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can’t
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C
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Contraction
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A clause that cannot stand alone as a sentence, but functions as either a noun, adjective or adverb in a sentence.
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As soon as I get a job, I’m going to move out of my mom’s basement.
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D | S
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Dependent | Subordinate clause
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The noun or noun phrase that a verb is directly acting upon.
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Odette bought the last sack of flour.
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D
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Direct object
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A verb form that functions as a noun.
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Melvin always thought that brushing one’s teeth regularly was overrated.
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G
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Gerund
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A noun phrase referring to someone or something that is affected by the action of a transitive verb (typically as a recipient), but is not the primary object.
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After dinner, Cordelia showed her guests home movies of her trip to Pocatello.
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I
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Indirect object
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A non-finite verb form considered neutral with respect to inflection; the “dictionary form” of a verb.
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bloviate
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I
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Infinitive
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(part of speech) An exclamation or filled pause; a word or phrase with no particular grammatical relation to a sentence, often an expression of emotion.
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Egad! You scared me half to death!
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I
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Interjection
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A sentence of inquiry that asks for a reply.
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What are the odds that you will still be sitting on that couch when I get home from work tonight?
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I
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Interrogative sentence
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An action verb which does not take a direct object.
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The angels wept when I auditioned for the church choir.
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I
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Intransitive verb
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(part of speech) A word that functions as the name of an object or set of objects, such as person, animal, place, word, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea.
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mammal
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N
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Noun
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A form of a verb that may function as an adjective, noun or adverb.
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A watched pot never boils.
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P
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Participle
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A word or, more commonly, a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence, usually consisting of a head, or central word, and elaborating words.
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endless rounds of JELL-O® shots
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P
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Phrase
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(part of speech) Any of a class of non-inflecting words typically employed to connect a following noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word.
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You’d be surprised what goes on under the boardwalk!
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P
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Preposition
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(part of speech) A type of word that refers anaphorically to a noun or noun phrase, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by a determiner and rarely takes an attributive adjective.
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He’s just not that into you.
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P
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Pronoun
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A word or phrase that is a noun denoting a particular person, place, organization, ship, animal, event, or other individual entity.
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Beavis
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P
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Proper noun
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A personal pronoun, having a form of "self" as a suffix to show that the subject's action affects the subject itself.
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I taught myself to play the accordion, even though my friends thought it was a nerdy thing to do.
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R
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Reflexive pronoun
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A written sentence that inappropriately joins two (or more) independent clauses into a single sentence, often with only a comma as separator (comma splice), which should be rendered either as separate sentences or as clauses joined more appropriately (such as by a semicolon or by a comma and coordinating conjunction).
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I’m really angry with Alistair for pantsing me at the prom I was so embarrassed I had to leave!
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R
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Run-on sentence
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A grammatically complete series of words consisting of a subject and predicate, even if one or the other is implied, and, in modern writing, typically beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop (period) or other punctuation.
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The lights are on, but nobody’s home.
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S
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Sentence
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The degree of comparison used when comparing the level of an attribute among three or more people, things or actions.
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Having known them all since childhood, I can safely say that Phoebe is the vainest of the Murgatroyd sisters.
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S
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Superlative
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(part of speech) A word that indicates an action, event, or state of being.
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defenestrate
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V
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Verb
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