What Part of Speech Is “And”?

Of the tens of thousands of words in the English language—estimates range upward from around 170,000—the word and is one of the most frequently used, beaten only by he, be, to, and of. That’s because and is an extremely useful word. It exists to make connections, linking words, thoughts, and sentences together.

What part of speech is it?

There are eight parts of speech in the English language. The word and belongs to the group known as conjunctions, which are words that join or connect other words. Conjunctions provide links between ideas and communicate how they are connected. They are function words, which means their purpose is to communicate relationships between elements of a sentence.

Specifically, and is one of the coordinating conjunctions, which join two or more words or groups of words on the same grammatical level, such as nouns, phrases, or clauses.

Even more specifically, and is the coordinating conjunction that expresses an additive relationship, meaning that things that are joined by and are being considered together or combined:

• He and they both went to that university.
• I’ve never been to this café before, and I don’t think I’ll come back.
• Before the day was over, we finished bagging up the food scraps and taking them to the composting site.

More examples of and

• Finishing up here will require putting our things away, wiping down the surfaces, and turning off the lights.
• Reese and Haruka belong to the same gym.
• Generally, the minimum course requirements for a premed undergraduate degree include one year each of biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics.
• Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you with your research, and I’ll do the same.
• Having a tendency to forget names and dates can make it hard to speak knowledgeably about history.
• The word biodiversity refers to the variety of living species on earth, including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.

And FAQs

What is the definition of and?

The function word and expresses connection or addition between things of equal rank or the same type.

What part of speech is and?

Of the eight parts of speech, and belongs to the group called conjunctions. Conjunctions provide links between ideas so that we know not only that the ideas are connected but how they are connected.

What subgroup of conjunctions does and belong to?

And belongs to the subgroup known as coordinating conjunctions. The other common coordinating conjunctions are for, nor, but, or, yet, and so.