Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [90]
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 (I will come) and a phrase (sometime soon). Phrases always express incomplete thoughts.
predicate. Everything in a sentence that is not part of the subject (i.e., the verb, its qualifiers and complements) is called the predicate. In “The man went to town after work,” The man is the subject and the rest of the sentence is the predicate. The verb alone is sometimes called the simple predicate.
preposition. A word that connects and specifies the relationship between a noun or noun equivalent and a verb, adjective, or other noun or noun equivalent. In “We climbed over the fence,” the preposition over connects the verb climbed with the noun fence. Whether a word is a preposition or a conjunction in often a matter of function. In “The army attacked before the enemy was awake,” before is a conjunction. But in “The army attacked before dawn,” before is a preposition. The distinction is that in the first sentence before is followed by a verb, whereas in the second it is not.
pronoun. A word used in place of a noun or nouns. In “I like walking and reading; such are my pleasures,” such is a pronoun standing for reading and walking. Pronouns have been variously grouped by different authorities. Among the more common groupings are personal pronouns (I, me, his, etc.), relative pronouns (who, whom, that, which), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those), and indefinite pronouns (some, several, either, neither, etc.).
subject. The word or phrase in a sentence or clause that indicates who or what is performing the action. In “I see you,” the subject is I. In “Climbing steep hills tires me,” Climbing steep hills is the subject.
substantive. A word or group of words that performs the function of a noun. In “Swimming is good for you,” Swimming is a substantive as well as a gerund.
verb. Verbs can be defined generally (if a bit loosely) as words that have tense and that denote what someone or something is or does. Verbs that have an object are called transitive verbs—that is, the verb transmits the action from subject to an object, as in “He put the book on the table.” Verbs that do not have an object are called intransitive verbs, as in “She slept