Word Type
Return can be a noun or a verb.
return used as a noun:
- The act of returning.
""I expect the house to be spotless upon my return."" - A return ticket.
"Do you want a one-way or return?" - An item that is returned, e.g. due to a defect.
"Last year there were 250 returns of this product, less than the 500 the previous year." - Gain or loss from an investment.
"It yielded a return of 5%." - A report of income submitted to a government for purposes of specifying exact tax payment amounts. A tax return.
"Hand in your return by the end of the tax year." - A carriage return character.
- The act of relinquishing control to the calling procedure.
- A return value: the data passed back from a called procedure.
- A short perpendicular extension of a desk, usually slightly lower.
- Catching a ball after a punt and running it back towards the opposing team.
- A throw from a fielder to the wicket-keeper or to another fielder at the wicket.
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 →
return used as a verb:
- To come or go back (to a place or person).
"Although the birds fly north for the summer, they return here in winter." - To go back in thought, narration, or argument.
"To return to my story..." - To turn back, retreat.
- To turn (something) round.
- To give something back to its original holder or owner.
"You should return the library book within one month." - To take something back to a retailer for a refund.
"If the goods don't work, you can return them." - To bat the ball back over the net in response to a serve.
"The player couldn't return the serve because it was so fast." - To play a card as a result of another player's lead.
"If one players plays a trump, the others must return a trump." - To throw a ball back to the wicket-keeper (or a fielder at that position) from somewhere in the field.
- To relinquish control to the calling procedure.
- To pass (data) back to the calling procedure.
"This function returns the number of files in the directory."
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 return?
- Noun usage: "I expect the house to be spotless upon my return."
- Noun usage: Do you want a one-way or return?
- Noun usage: Last year there were 250 returns of this product, less than the 500 the previous year.
- Noun usage: It yielded a return of 5%.
- Noun usage: Hand in your return by the end of the tax year.
- Verb usage: Although the birds fly north for the summer, they return here in winter.
- Verb usage: To return to my story...
- Verb usage: You should return the library book within one month.
- Verb usage: If the goods don't work, you can return them.
- Verb usage: The player couldn't return the serve because it was so fast.
- Verb usage: If one players plays a trump, the others must return a trump.
- Verb usage: This function returns the number of files in the directory.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of return 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 return, 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).
