Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of speech. For example, "work" can be a verb and a noun; "but" can be a conjunction and a preposition; "well" can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In addition, many nouns can act as adjectives.
To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: "What job is this word doing in this sentence?"
In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word "but" has six jobs to do:
- verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjuction!
| word | part of speech | example |
| work | noun | My work is easy. |
| verb | I work in London. | |
| but | conjunction | John came but Mary didn't come. |
| preposition | Everyone came but Mary. | |
| well | adjective | Are you well? |
| adverb | She speaks well. | |
| interjection | Well! That's expensive! | |
| afternoon | noun | We ate in the afternoon. |
| noun acting as adjective | We had afternoon tea. |
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