| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| Page 265 |
auxiliary verb | |
| A verb, such as have, can, or will, that accompanies the main verb in a clause and helps to make distinctions in mood, voice, aspect, and tense. See Grammar, auxiliary and primary verbs. | 1 |
base form | |
| The form of a word to which affixes or other base forms can be added to make new words, as mystify in mystifying, build in rebuild, and writing in skywriting. | 2 |
case | |
| The form of noun, pronoun, or modifier that indicates its grammatical relationship to other words in a clause or sentence. In English only pronouns are differentiated by case. English pronouns have three cases: Nominative or Subjective (she), Objective (him), and Possessive (his). See Grammar, pronouns, personal. | 3 |
clause | |
| A group of words containing a subject and a predicate and forming part of a compound or complex sentence. | 4 |
collective noun | |
| A noun, such as flock or team that refers to a collection of persons or things regarded as a unit. See Grammar, collective nouns. | 5 |
common noun | |
| A noun, such as book or dog, that can be preceded by the definite article and that represents one or all of the members of a class. | 6 |
comparative degree | |
| The intermediate degree of comparison of adjectives, as better, sweeter, or more wonderful, or adverbs, as more softly. See Grammar, adjectives and adverbs, comparison of. | 7 |
comparison | |
| The modification or inflection of an adjective or adverb to indicate the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees. See Grammar, adjectives and adverbs, comparison of. | 8 |
complement | |
| A word or group of words used after a verb to complete a predicate construction; for example, the phrase to eat ice cream in We like to eat ice cream is the complement. | 9 |
complex sentence | |
| A sentence that consists of at least one independent clause and one dependent clause, such as When I grow up, I want to be a doctor. | 10 |
compound-complex sentence | |
| A sentence consisting of at least two coordinate independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses, as I wanted to go, but I decided not to when it started raining. | 11 |
compound sentence | |
| A sentence of two or more coordinate independent clauses, often joined by a conjunction, as The problem was difficult, but I finally found the answer. | 12 |
concord | |
| Agreement. | 13 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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