part of speech

Grammatical function of a word, described in the grammatical tradition of the Western world, based on Greek and Latin.

The four major parts of speech are: noun, verb, adjective, and adverb; the minor parts of speech vary according to schools of grammatical theory, but include: conjunction, preposition, pronoun, and interjection.

In languages like Greek and Latin, the part of speech of a word tends to be invariable (usually marked by an ending, or inflection); in English, it is much harder to recognize the function of a word simply by its form.

Some English words may have only one function (for example, and as a conjunction). Others may have several functions (for example, fancy, which is a noun in the phrase ‘flights of fancy’, a verb in ‘Fancy that!’ and an adjective in ‘a fancy hat’).