Can you think of yourself forgetting the names of your friends, pets, places you visited, books you read or movies that you saw? It is unthinkable! The different parts of speech define the English language. They are eight in number and include what are familiar to you by now as nouns and verbs.
A noun is something that will help you to name your friends, pets, places you visited, books you read or movies that you saw. Verbs help you to describe various actions performed by you or your friends or your pets. Nouns and verbs form the backbone of a sentence and no sentence can be formed without the two.
Because of their importance you might think that nouns and verbs are two groups of words that are unique. However, you come across words such as SMOKE, MEASURE and GRIN that double up as both a noun and a verb.
Consider these sentences:
‘The GRIN on his face was good to see.’
‘Whenever I see my little sister getting harried I GRIN and enjoy her reaction.’
You will notice that in the first sentence GRIN is used as a noun and in the second sentence it is used as a verb. To check if a word in the sentence is a noun you could try using the words 'the', 'an' or 'a' before the word and see if it still makes sense. If it does, then it is a noun. To check if a word in the sentence is a verb you could try using the words 'I', or 'you' or any noun before the word and see if it still makes sense. If it does, then it is a verb. You will notice that it applies to the two sentences with GRIN in them.
There are a large number of words which take on the dual role of verb and noun and the quiz that follows helps you to understand their usage.