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Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs

Words classifiable in four different ways as either a noun, adjective, verb or adverb, are very useful when trying to understand the semantic relationships that can exist between words.  You may or may not know that Wordnet is a free lexical database of English available from Stanford University that records many such useful relationships. The main ones are Synonymy, Antonymy, Hypernymy, Hyponymy, Meronymy, Holonymy, and Troponymy. Why not download Wordnet and type in one of the 56 words from the list I’ve prepared below and explore these relationships.

1. best
2. better
3. bitter
4. broadcast
5. broadside
6. clean
7. clear
8. close
9. cod
10. collect
11. counter
12. crisscross
13. damn
14. double
15. down
16. express
17. fair
18. fast
19. fine
20. firm
21. flush
22. forward
23. free
24. home
25. jolly
26. last
27. light
28. long
29. low
30. okay
31. out
32. pat
33. plain
34. plumb
35. plump
36. pop
37. quiet
38. retail
39. right
40. rough
41. round
42. second
43. short
44. solo
45. sound
46. square
47. steady
48. still
49. tiptoe
50. true
51. well
52. wholesale
53. worst
54. wrong
55. zigzag
56. slow + its homonym sloe

Lexicons, like Wordnet, make learning about words fun and interesting even though some words seem to be more important than others! William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White once wrote:

“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place… it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.

The Elements of Style”

If you think your English is up to it, why not take part in the science writing competition organised by “Science in School”. You can either visit their main website or go straight to the information page.

The BBC writing style guidelines “sets out BBC-specific style points and other more general style and grammatical points for all types of printed or electronic materials, from information for external audiences to internal reports”.

The Writing Stylegude from techcommunicators.com, includes a Dictionary of Plain English.

The BBC News Style Guide “represents some of John Allen’s extraordinary wisdom surrounding the use of English in written and spoken communications.This is in many ways at the heart of what the BBC does and what it is respected for.This is not a “do and don’t” list but a guide that invites you to explore some of the complexities of modern English usage and to make your own decisions about what does and does not work. It should improve your scripts and general writing, not to mention making you feel better informed, challenged and amused”.