What is the difference between a verb, a noun and an adjective?
As we have seen in our opening section, Verbs, a verb is a doing word that can be a physical action, a mental action or a state of being.
A noun is a person, place or thing. There are two types: the proper noun and the common noun.
A common noun is the word for something, such as girl, cake, table, horse. A proper noun is the specific name we give a person, place or group, such as Michael, Glasgow, Royal Navy.
An adjective is a word that describes a noun, giving further information about the noun. For example “sunny day”, “tall woman” and “happy smile”. These are very basic examples; sometimes the adjective in a sentence can be hard to spot.
Examples of nouns, adjectives and verbs
Take a look at these following sentences to see how verbs, nouns and adjectives work together. We have marked the verb(s) as red, the noun(s) as green and the adjective(s) as blue.
- The baby looked adorable in her cot.
- We went to the local shop to buy our dinner.
- It was raining, so Jane grabbed her warm raincoat.
Adverbs
While an adjective describes a noun, an adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of an adjective or verb, expressing manner, place, time or degree.
Adverbs usually end in the letters “ly”, common examples being: gently, carefully, noisily.
- He quickly runs to the shop
- She happily chatters with her friends
- She walks slowly around the room