A “phrase,” in one sense of the term as it is used in grammar, is a group of words that forms part of a sentence but does not contain a subject and verb that operate together grammatically. In other words, “in Chicago” is a phrase, but “They live in Chicago” is not a phrase. (The larger group of words containing the subject “they” and the verb “live” is a clause. It is also a grammatical sentence in itself.)
Here are some more examples of this type of phrase. Notice that there is a grammatical ordering of the words but no subject-plus-verb combinations.
the large apartment upstairs
in the New Year
his new girlfriend
sleeping on the couch
my apologizing to her
after the movie
We often use the word “phrase” in connection with the notion of “prepositional phrase.” Prepositional phrases are a combination of a preposition followed by a noun, pronoun, or group of words functioning together as a noun; for example, phrases like “in the park,” “after midnight,” “for me and you,” “beyond that tree over there” are all prepositional phrases.
In a different sense of the term “phrase” in grammar, a phrase is seen as a main constituent, or primary building block, of a sentence, such as a “noun phrase” or a “verb phrase.” The sentence “The man who bought the ring returned it the next day” is made up of the noun phrase “The man who bought the ring” and the verb phrase “returned it the next day.” In this sense of the term “phrase,” it is possible for there to be one-word phrases. For example, the word “she” in the sentence “She is sleeping” is a noun phrase just in itself. The word “forgot” in the sentence “I forgot” is the entire verb phrase in that sentence. Every English full sentence consists of at least a noun phrase and a verb phrase, which is sometimes represented as
S (sentence)=NP + VP.