Clause

How it is used

Grammar books divide clauses into main (independent) and subordinate (dependent) clauses, and subordinate ones into noun, relative and adverbial clauses. A sentence can contain one clause or several.

Example sentences

1. 'I stayed home because I was ill' has two clauses: a main clause and a clause of reason.

2. Underline the subject and verb in each clause before you add the commas.

Common collocations

• main clause
• subordinate clause
• relative clause
• if-clause
• noun clause

Related terms

• sentenceA group of words that expresses a complete idea and is grammatically complete; in writing it starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.
• main clauseA clause that can stand alone as a complete sentence and carries the main idea, such as 'we cancelled the trip' in 'Because it rained, we cancelled the trip'.
• subordinate clauseA clause that depends on a main clause and cannot stand alone as a sentence, such as 'when the bell rang' or 'that she was right'.
• relative clauseA clause that gives more information about a noun, usually starting with who, which, that, whose, where or when, as in 'the book that I borrowed'.
• phraseA group of words that works as one unit in a sentence but usually has no subject-verb pair, such as 'the old library' or 'in the morning'.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• clause · Law
• clause · Contract & Commercial Law

More terms: Clauses and Sentences

• subject
• object
• predicate
• conditional sentence