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When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb. Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or ...
An adjective (abbreviated adj.) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase.Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. [1]
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are open classes – word classes that readily accept new members, such as the noun celebutante (a celebrity who frequents the fashion circles), and other similar relatively new words. [2] The rest are closed classes; for example, it is rare for a new pronoun to enter the language. Determiners ...
So can those ending in -ch / -tch (e.g. "the French", "the Dutch") provided they are pronounced with a 'ch' sound (e.g. the adjective Czech does not qualify). Many place-name adjectives and many demonyms are also used for various other things, sometimes with and sometimes without one or more additional words.
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl.
Adjectives make the meaning of another word (noun) more precise. Verb (states action or being) a word denoting an action (walk), occurrence (happen), or state of being (be). Without a verb, a group of words cannot be a clause or sentence. Adverb (describes, limits) a modifier of an adjective, verb, or another adverb (very, quite). Adverbs make ...
With the adjective as a modifier in a noun phrase, the adjective and the noun typically receive equal stress (a black bird), but in a compound, the adjective typically takes primary word stress (a blackbird). Only a small set of English adjectives function in this way: [37] The colour words black, blue, brown, green, grey, red, and white
In English, verbification typically involves simple conversion of a non-verb to a verb. The verbs to verbify and to verb, the first by derivation with an affix and the second by zero derivation, are themselves products of verbification (see autological word), and, as might be guessed, the term to verb is often used more specifically, to refer only to verbification that does not involve a ...