What part of speech is "was"?

To determine the part of speech of "was",we have to know the types of parts of speech.There are eight types of parts of speech.


These are noun,pronoun,verb,adverb,preposition, conjunction and interjection.Remember that determiners are a special type of adjective.

To find out the part of  speech of "was",we need to  remember that a single word in different sentences can functions as different parts of speech.



Now analyse the following example:



●He was a doctor.

●Explanation:

In the above sentence, the part of speech of "was" is a verb. The subject of "was" is he and the predicate of "was" is a doctor.Here" was" is a linking verb.A linking verb functions like "=" sign of math.

Consider the following example:

●He was a doctor.


Here,He=a doctor.Here,"was" as a linking verb is telling us that he and a doctor is the same person.

Now consider the following example:

●She was singing a song.

Explanation:Here"was" has been used as an auxiliary verb because  here "was" is helping the principal verb "sing with ing "to form past continuous tense.

Now consider the following example:

◆He ate the mango.

■The mango was eaten by me.

Here "was" has helped the main verb "help"with ed to form passive voice.

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