Phrase

Prepositional phrase with a preposition as head (e.g. in love, over the rainbow)

• Noun phrase with a noun as head (e.g. the black cat, a cat on the mat)
• Verb phrase with a verb as head (e.g. eat cheese, jump up and down)
• Adjectival phrase with an adjective as head (e.g. full of toys)
• Adverbial phrase with adverb as head (e.g. very carefully)

Formal definition

A phrase is a syntactic structure which has syntactic properties derived from its head.

For example the house at the end of the street is a noun phrase. Its head is house, and its syntactic properties come from that fact. It contains prepositional phrase at the end of the street, which acts as an adjunct. At the end of the street could be replaced by another adjunct, such as white, to make the phrase the white house. Of the street, another prepositional phrase, acts as a complement of end. Each phrase has a word called its head which gives it its syntactic properties.

Complexity

A complex phrase consists of several words, whereas a simple phrase consists of only one word. This terminology is especially often used with verb phrases:

• simple past and present are simple verb, which require just one verb
• complex verb have one or two aspects added, hence require additional two or three words

"Complex", which is phrase-level, is often confused with "compound", which is word-level.

See phrase structure rules, syntax, grammar.

See also: Proverb

---

As search item with regard to search features of search engines and other computer programs, a phrase is a sequence of words, as opposed to just a set of words.

---

In music see Phrase (music).