article
Sign in to saveword used with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun; one of word classes
AI overview
An article is a small word (like "a," "an," or "the" in English) that comes before nouns to show whether you're talking about something specific or general. It matters because articles help clarify meaning in sentences—for example, "the book" refers to a particular book, while "a book" refers to any book.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
In grammar, an article is any of a small set of words or affixes (such as a, an, and the in English) used with nouns to limit or give definiteness to the application. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. These words represent a specific object, depending on the situation, but a is less specific than the.
Articles combine with nouns to form noun phrases, and typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase. In English, the and a (rendered as an when followed by a vowel sound) are the definite and indefinite articles respectively. Articles in many other languages also carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as art.