Word Type
Even can be a verb, a noun, an adjective or an adverb.
even used as a verb:
- To make flat and level.
"We need to even this playing field; the west goal is too low."
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 →
even used as a noun:
- Evening.
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 →
even used as an adjective:
- Flat and level.
"Clear out those rocks. The surface must be even." - Without great variation.
"Despite her fear, she spoke in an even voice." - Equal in proportion, quantity, size etc.
"The distribution of food must be even." - Leaving no remainder when divided by 2.
"Four, fourteen and forty are even numbers."
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 →
even used as an adverb:
- exactly, just, fully
"I fulfilled my instructions even as I had promised." - Implying an extreme example in the case mentioned, as compared to the implied reality
"Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes." - Emphasising a comparative
"I was strong before; but now I am even stronger."
An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective (very red), verb (quietly running), or another adverb (very carefully). Learn more →
Related Searches
What type of word is even?
- Verb usage: We need to even this playing field; the west goal is too low.
- Adjective usage: Clear out those rocks. The surface must be even.
- Adjective usage: Despite her fear, she spoke in an even voice.
- Adjective usage: The distribution of food must be even.
- Adjective usage: Four, fourteen and forty are even numbers.
- Adverb usage: I fulfilled my instructions even as I had promised.
- Adverb usage: You are leaving tonight? — Even so.
- Adverb usage: Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.
- Adverb usage: Did you even make it through the front door?
- Adverb usage: That was before I was even born.
- Adverb usage: I was strong before; but now I am even stronger.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of even 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 even, 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).
