Phrase

The language of English is full of adventures and new things when one comes to exploring it. If you are a new learner of this language then it wouldn’t be long when you will come across the term phrase and would want to know what it means so you can use correctly in your writing or speaking.

Today in this article, I will discuss about phrase and what it really means.

Phrase

Phrase is a grammatical term and it refers to a group of words (two or more) that do not exist as a complete sentence. These words don’t form a sentence which means that they are missing either subject or verb or both. So phrases are incomplete sentences.

Example:

The evil peon

Take a look at the above example and see if you can find a verb and subject.

You will find a noun accompanied with an adjective but you don’t know if that noun  really is the subject or not. Such a grouping of words is called a phrase.

Phrases can exist as a group of long or short words.

Example:

After the devastating fall, which led them all into pitch darkness of the black hole and made it impossible to see anything.

Now the above sentence appears very long but you will be unable to find the subject-verb pair in this sentence, which will help you identify it as a phrase.

There are different types of phrases in English language which include noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase, infinitive phrase etc.

Noun Phrase:

As discussed above, when the phrase contains a definitive noun it is called noun phrase.

Example:

The big door

Verb Phrase:

When the verb is a part of a phrase it is called verb phrase.

Example:

Should have been bathing

Prepositional Phrase

The phrase beginning with a preposition is called prepositional phrase.

Example:

Beside the building

Infinitive Phrase

The phrase starting with an infinitive “to” is called an infinitive phrase.

Example:

To dump the garbage