Word Type
On can be an adverb, an adjective or a preposition.
on used as an adverb:
- to an operating state
"turn the television on" - along, forwards (continuing an action)
"drive on, rock on" - in, or towards the half of the field on the same side as the batsman's legs; the left side for a right-handed batsman; leg
An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective (very red), verb (quietly running), or another adverb (very carefully). Learn more →
on used as an adjective:
- in the state of being active, functioning or operating
- performing according to schedule
"Are we still on for tonight?" - Having reached a base as a runner and being positioned there, awaiting further action from a subsequent batter.
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 →
on used as a preposition:
- Positioned at the upper surface of, touching from above.
"on the table; on the couch" - covering
- At the date of.
"Born on the 4th of July." - Some time during the day of.
"I'll see you on Monday." - Dealing with the subject of, about, or concerning something.
"A book on history." - Touching; hanging from.
"The fruit ripened on the trees." - In the possession of.
"I haven't got any money on me." - Because of, or due to something.
"To arrest someone on suspicion of bribery." - Paid for by.
"The drinks are on me tonight, boys." -
"I saw it on television." - Indicating a means of subsistence.
"They lived on ten dollars a week." - (of a drug) Regularly taking or dependent on.
"You've been on these antidepressants far too long." - Having V as both domain and codomain.
- Having Vn as domain and V as codomain.
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 →
Related Searches
What type of word is on?
- Adverb usage: turn the television on
- Adverb usage: drive on, rock on
- Adjective usage: Are we still on for tonight?
- Adjective usage: Is the show still on?
- Preposition usage: on the table; on the couch
- Preposition usage: Born on the 4th of July.
- Preposition usage: I'll see you on Monday.
- Preposition usage: The bus leaves on Friday.
- Preposition usage: Can I see you on a different day? On Sunday I'm busy.
- Preposition usage: A book on history.
- Preposition usage: The World Summit on the Information Society.
- Preposition usage: The fruit ripened on the trees.
- Preposition usage: The painting hangs on the wall.
- Preposition usage: I haven't got any money on me.
- Preposition usage: To arrest someone on suspicion of bribery.
- Preposition usage: To contact someone on a hunch.
- Preposition usage: The stock price increased on news of a new product.
- Preposition usage: The drinks are on me tonight, boys.
- Preposition usage: The meal is on the house.
- Preposition usage: I paid for the airfare and meals for my family, but the hotel room was on the company.
- Preposition usage: I saw it on television.
- Preposition usage: Can't you see I'm on the phone?
- Preposition usage: They lived on ten dollars a week.
- Preposition usage: The dog suvived three weeks on rainwater.
- Preposition usage: You've been on these antidepressants far too long.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of on 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 on, 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).