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Down can be a noun, a preposition, an adverb, an adjective or a verb.

down used as a noun:

  1. Hill, rolling grassland (such as "Churchill Downs", "Upson Downs" from Auntie Mame, by Patrick Dennis).
  2. Field, especially for racing.
  3. A single play, from the time the ball is snapped (the start) to the time the whistle is blown (the end) when the ball is down, or is downed.
  4. Soft, fluffy immature feathers which grow on young birds. Used as insulating material in duvets, sleeping bags and jackets.

Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →

down used as a preposition:

  1. From one end to another; especially, from a higher end to a lower.
    "The ball rolled down the hill."

Prepositions are used to show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word. Examples of prepositions are: in, during, beside, after, for. In the sentence "Sows suffer in factory farms." The preposition "in" tells us the position of the sow relative to the factory farm. Learn more →

down used as an adverb:

  1. From a higher position to a lower one; downwards.
    "The cat jumped down from the table."
  2. At a lower place or position.
    "His place is farther down the road."
  3. South (as south is at the bottom of typical maps).
    "I went down to Miami for a conference."
  4. Away from the city (even if the location is to the North).
    "He went down to Cavan."
  5. Into a state of non-operation.
    "The computer has been shut down."
  6. The direction leading away from the principal terminus, away from milepost zero.
  7. Get down.
    "Down, boy!"

An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective (very red), verb (quietly running), or another adverb (very carefully). Learn more →

down used as an adjective:

  1. Depressed, feeling low.
    "So, things got you down? / Is Rodney Dangerfield giving you no respect? / Well, bunky, cheer up!"
  2. On a lower level than before.
    "The stock market is down."
  3. With "on", negative about, hostile to
    "Ever since Nixon, I've been down on Republicans."
  4. With "with", relaxed about, accepting of
    "I'm down with him hanging with us."
  5. Inoperable; out of order; out of service.
    "The system is down."
  6. Of a task; finished in phrases like
    "Two down and three to go. (Two tasks completed and three more still to be done.)"

Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →

down used as a verb:

  1. To drink or swallow, especially without stopping before the vessel containing the liquid is empty.
    "He downed an ale and ordered another."
  2. To cause to come down.
    "The storm downed several old trees along the highway."
  3. To put a ball in a pocket; to pot a ball.
    "He downed two balls on the break."
  4. To bring a play to an end by touching the ball to the ground or while it is on the ground.
    "He downed it at the seven-yard line."

Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →

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What type of word is down?

As detailed above, 'down' can be a noun, a preposition, an adverb, an adjective or a verb. Here are some examples of its usage:
  1. Preposition usage: The ball rolled down the hill.
  2. Preposition usage: The bus went down the street.
  3. Preposition usage: They walked down the beach holding hands.
  4. Adverb usage: The cat jumped down from the table.
  5. Adverb usage: His place is farther down the road.
  6. Adverb usage: I went down to Miami for a conference.
  7. Adverb usage: He went down to Cavan.
  8. Adverb usage: Down on the farm.
  9. Adverb usage: Down country.
  10. Adverb usage: The computer has been shut down.
  11. Adverb usage: They closed the shop down.
  12. Adverb usage: Down, boy!
  13. Adjective usage: So, things got you down? / Is Rodney Dangerfield giving you no respect? / Well, bunky, cheer up!
  14. Adjective usage: The stock market is down.
  15. Adjective usage: Prices are down.
  16. Adjective usage: Ever since Nixon, I've been down on Republicans.
  17. Adjective usage: I'm down with him hanging with us.
  18. Adjective usage: The system is down.
  19. Adjective usage: Two down and three to go. (Two tasks completed and three more still to be done.)
  20. Verb usage: He downed an ale and ordered another.
  21. Verb usage: The storm downed several old trees along the highway.
  22. Verb usage: He downed two balls on the break.
  23. Verb usage: He downed it at the seven-yard line.

Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of down are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of down, and guess at its most common usage.

Word Type

For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.

The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.

Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.

Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).

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