phrase

Sequence of at least two words

EntityQ187931

Also known as phrases · expression

Subclass of: constituent
, word or phrase
, form
1
Sources
1.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=linguistic%20form
View statement on Wikidata ↗
+1 more
Part of: sentence
, group
1
Sources
1.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/phrase_1
View statement on Wikidata ↗

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

In grammar, a phrase — called an expression in some contexts — is a group of one or more words acting as a grammatical unit. It can be used within a sentence, so this means that a phrase can be treated as a unit within a larger structure. For instance, the English sentence "the squirrel is very happy" is a clause phrase which contains the noun phrase "the squirrel" and the verb phrase "is very happy". Additionally, "very happy" is an adjective phrase. Phrases can consist of a single word or a complete sentence. In theoretical linguistics, phrases are often analyzed as units of syntactic structure such as a constituent. There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", or "kick the bucket". It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc. In linguistics, these are known as phrasemes.

Overview

All data

44 statements · 41% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

On other databases

29 identifiers linking phrase across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

41%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 26, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). phrase (Q187931). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/phrase-Q187931