The Eight Parts of Speech With Baseball

Evan Gilman and Clayton Wilms

The Noun

• Definition: The part of speech that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action and can function as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or an appositive.

• Little roller up along first, behind the bag, and it gets through Buckner!

• The umpire has found some cork in Sosa’s broken bat!

The Pronoun

• Definition: The part of speech that substitutes for nouns or noun phrases and designates persons or things asked for, previously specified, or understood from the context.

• I can’t believe I am holding this legendary ball in my own hands.

• He went all out to make that diving catch.

The Verb

• Definition: The part of speech that expresses existence, action, or occurrence in most languages.

• I can’t believe he climbed to the top of the wall and caught that ball.

• He really knows how to hit.

The Adverb

• Definition: The part of speech that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb.

• He had to react very quickly to catch that ball.• He looked back at the umpire immediately.

The Adjective

• Definition: The part of speech that modifies a noun or other substantive by limiting, qualifying, or specifying and distinguished in English morphologically by one of several suffixes, such as -able, -ous, -er, and -est, or syntactically by position directly preceding a noun or nominal phrase.

• He ran fast and slid far to catch the baseball.• His steady head and quick bat earned him a hit.

The Preposition

• Definition: A word or phrase placed typically before a substantive and indicating the relation of that substantive to a verb, an adjective, or another substantive, as English at, by, with, from, and in regard to.

• He blew the call at first base!• Ripken crushed the ball to left field.

The Conjunction

• Definition: The part of speech that serves to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences.

• He caught the ball and gunned out the base runner.• He could have just tagged third base, but he threw it to

first instead.

The Interjection

• Definition: The part of speech that usually expresses emotion and is capable of standing alone.

• Yes! That ball is out of here!• What! He was definitely safe!