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

up used as a preposition:

  1. Toward the top of.
    "The cat went up the tree."
  2. Further along (in any direction).
    "Go up the street until you see the sign."

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 →

up used as a noun:

  1. The direction opposed to the pull of gravity.
    "Up is a good way to go."

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 →

up used as an adverb:

  1. Away from the center of the Earth or other planet; in opposite direction to the downward pull of gravity.
    "I looked up and saw the airplane overhead."
  2. Into pieces.
    "tear up"
  3. An abstract adverb of motion or change.
    "mess up"
  4. A function word indicating intensity or emphasis.
    "speak up"
  5. North.
    "I’m going up to New York to visit my family this weekend."
  6. Higher or louder.
    "Turn the volume up."
  7. Higher in pitch.
    "Listen to your voice go up at the end of a question."
  8. Traditional term for the direction leading to the principal terminus, towards milepost zero.
  9. Relatively close to the batsman.
    "The bowler pitched the ball up."

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

up used as a verb:

  1. To increase or raise.
    "If we up the volume, we'll be able to make out the details."
  2. To promote.
    "It wasn’t long before they upped him to Vice President."
  3. To act suddenly, usually with another verb.
    "He just upped and quit."

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 →

up used as an adjective:

  1. Awake.
    "I can’t believe it’s 3 a.m. and you’re still up."
  2. Finished, to an end
    "Time is up!"
  3. In a good mood.
    "I’m feeling up today."
  4. Willing; ready.
    "If you are up for a trip, let’s go."
  5. Next in a sequence.
    "Smith is next up to bat."
  6. Happening; new.
    "What is up with that project at headquarters?"
  7. Facing upwards; facing toward the top.
    "Put the notebook face up on the table."
  8. Standing.
    "Get up and give her your seat."
  9. On a higher level.
  10. Available; made public.
    "The new notices are up as of last Tuesday."
  11. Of a person, informed about; abreast of; current.
    "I’m not up on the latest news. What’s going on?"
  12. Functional; working.
    "Is the server back up?"
  13. Traveling towards a major terminus.
    "The London train is on the up line."
  14. Served chilled and strained into a stemmed glass.
    "A Cosmopolitan is typically served up."

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 →

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What type of word is up?

As detailed above, 'up' can be a preposition, a noun, an adverb, a verb or an adjective. Here are some examples of its usage:
  1. Preposition usage: The cat went up the tree.
  2. Preposition usage: Go up the street until you see the sign.
  3. Noun usage: Up is a good way to go.
  4. Adverb usage: I looked up and saw the airplane overhead.
  5. Adverb usage: tear up
  6. Adverb usage: chop up
  7. Adverb usage: mess up
  8. Adverb usage: take up
  9. Adverb usage: speak up
  10. Adverb usage: type up
  11. Adverb usage: I’m going up to New York to visit my family this weekend.
  12. Adverb usage: Turn the volume up.
  13. Adverb usage: Listen to your voice go up at the end of a question.
  14. Adverb usage: The bowler pitched the ball up.
  15. Verb usage: If we up the volume, we'll be able to make out the details.
  16. Verb usage: It wasn’t long before they upped him to Vice President.
  17. Verb usage: He just upped and quit.
  18. Verb usage: He upped and punched that guy.
  19. Adjective usage: I can’t believe it’s 3 a.m. and you’re still up.
  20. Adjective usage: Time is up!
  21. Adjective usage: I’m feeling up today.
  22. Adjective usage: If you are up for a trip, let’s go.
  23. Adjective usage: Smith is next up to bat.
  24. Adjective usage: What is up with that project at headquarters?
  25. Adjective usage: Put the notebook face up on the table.
  26. Adjective usage: Take a break and put your feet up.
  27. Adjective usage: Get up and give her your seat.
  28. Adjective usage: The new notices are up as of last Tuesday.
  29. Adjective usage: I’m not up on the latest news. What’s going on?
  30. Adjective usage: Is the server back up?
  31. Adjective usage: The London train is on the up line.
  32. Adjective usage: A Cosmopolitan is typically served up.

Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of up 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 up, 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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