Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors - Bill Bryson [139]
complement. A word or group of words that completes a predicate construction—that is, that provides full sense to the meaning of the verb. In “He is a rascal,” rascal is the complement of the verb is.
conjunction. A word that links grammatical equivalents, as in “The president and prime minister conferred for two hours” (the conjunction and links two nouns) and “She came yesterday, but she didn’t stay long” (the conjunction but links two clauses).
genitive. A noun or pronoun is in the genitive case when it expresses possession (my house, his car, Sally’s job). Although some authorities make very small distinctions between genitives and possessives, many others do not. In this book, I have used the term possessives throughout.
gerund. A verb made to function as a noun, as with the italicized words here. “Seeing is believing” “Cooking is an art” “Walking is good exercise.” Gerunds always end in -ing.
infinitive. The term describes verbs that are in the infinite mood (i.e., that do not have a subject). Put another way, it is a verb form that indicates the action of the verb without inflection to indicate person, number, or tense. There are two forms of infinitive: the full (to go, to see) and bare (go, see), often called simply “an infinitive without to.”
mood. Verbs have four moods:
1. The indicative, which is used to state facts or ask questions (I am going; What time is it?).
2. The imperative, which indicates commands (Come here; Leave me alone).
3. The infinite, which makes general statements and has no subject (To know her is to love her).
4. The subjunctive, which is principally used to indicate hypotheses or suppositions (If I were you…). The uses of the subjunctive are discussed more fully in the body of the book.
noun is usually defined as a word that describes a person, place, thing, or quality. Such a definition, as many authorities have noted, is technically inadequate. Most of us would not think of hope, despair, and exultation as things, yet they are nouns. And most of the words that describe qualities—good, bad, happy, and the like—are not nouns but adjectives. Palmer notes that there is no difference whatever in sense between “He suffered terribly” and “His suffering was terrible,” yet suffered is a verb and suffering a noun. There is, in short, no definition for noun that isn’t circular, though, happily, for most of us it is one part of speech that is almost always instantly recognizable.
object. Whereas the subject of a sentence tells you who or what is performing an action, the object tells you on whom or on what the action is being performed. In “I like you,” you is the object of the verb like. In “They have now built most of the house,” most of the house is the object of the verb built. Sometimes sentences have direct and indirect objects, as here: “Please send me four tickets” “I’ll give the dog a bath” (cited by Phythian). The direct objects are four tickets and a bath. The indirect objects are me and the dog. Prepositions also have objects. In the sentence “Give it to him,” him is the object of the preposition to.
participle. The participle is a verbal adjective. There are two kinds: present participles, which end in -ing (walking, looking), and past participles, which end in -d (heard), -ed (learned), -n (broken), or -t (bent). The terms present participle and past participle can be misleading because present participles are often used in past-tense senses (“They were looking for the money”) and past participles are often used when the sense is the present or future (“She has broken it” “Things have never looked better”). When present-tense participles are used as nouns, they are called gerunds.
phrase. A group of words that does not have a subject and verb. “I will come sometime soon” consists of a clause