Word Type
Foul can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
foul used as an adjective:
- Covered with, or containing, extraneous matter which is injurious, noxious, offensive, or obstructive; filthy; dirty; not clean; polluted; nasty; defiled; as, a foul cloth; foul hands; a foul chimney; foul air; a ship's bottom is foul when overgrown with barnacles; a gun becomes foul from repeated firing; a well is foul with polluted water.
"Cap'n, she's all fouled up." - Scurrilous; obscene or profane; abusive; as, foul words; foul language.
"The rascal spewed forth a series of foul pronouncements." - Hateful; detestable; shameful; odious; wretched.
"He has a foul set of friends." - Loathsome; disgusting; as, a foul disease.
"This foul food is making me retch." - Ugly; homely; poor.
- Not favorable; unpropitious; not fair or advantageous; as, a foul wind; a foul road; cloudy or rainy; stormy; not fair; -- said of the weather, sky, etc.
"Some foul weather is brewing." - Not conformed to the established rules and customs of a game, conflict, test, etc.; unfair; dishonest; dishonorable; cheating; as, foul play.
"Foul play is not suspected." - Having freedom of motion interfered with by collision or entanglement; entangled; -- opposed to clear; as, a rope or cable may get foul while paying it out.
"We've got a foul anchor." - Outside of the base lines; in foul territory.
"Jones hit foul ball after foul ball."
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 →
foul used as a noun:
- A breach of the rules of a game, especially one involving inappropriate contact with an opposing player in order to gain an advantage; as, for example, foot-tripping in soccer, or contact of any kind in basketball.
- A (usually accidental) contact between a bowler and the lane before the bowler has released the ball.
- A foul ball, a ball which has been hit outside of the base lines.
"Jones hit a foul up over the screen."
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 →
foul used as a verb:
- To make dirty.
"He's fouled her diapers." - To besmirch.
"He's fouled his reputation." - To clog or obstruct.
"The hair has fouled the drain." - To entangle.
"The kelp has fouled the prop." - To make contact with an opposing player in order to gain advantage.
"Smith fouled him hard." - To hit outside of the baselines.
"Jones fouled the ball off the facing of the upper deck." - To become clogged.
"The drain fouled." - To become entangled.
"The prop fouled on the kelp." - To commit a foul.
"Smith fouled within the first minute of the quarter." - To hit a ball outside of the baselines.
"Jones fouled for strike one."
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 →
Related Searches
What type of word is foul?
- Adjective usage: Cap'n, she's all fouled up.
- Adjective usage: The rascal spewed forth a series of foul pronouncements.
- Adjective usage: He has a foul set of friends.
- Adjective usage: This foul food is making me retch.
- Adjective usage: Some foul weather is brewing.
- Adjective usage: Foul play is not suspected.
- Adjective usage: We've got a foul anchor.
- Adjective usage: Jones hit foul ball after foul ball.
- Noun usage: Jones hit a foul up over the screen.
- Verb usage: He's fouled her diapers.
- Verb usage: He's fouled his reputation.
- Verb usage: The hair has fouled the drain.
- Verb usage: The kelp has fouled the prop.
- Verb usage: Smith fouled him hard.
- Verb usage: Jones fouled the ball off the facing of the upper deck.
- Verb usage: The drain fouled.
- Verb usage: The prop fouled on the kelp.
- Verb usage: Smith fouled within the first minute of the quarter.
- Verb usage: Jones fouled for strike one.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of foul 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 foul, 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).
