| subject complement |
| Definition - A word, phrase, or clause that both follows a copula and modifies the subject of the sentence. |
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Example - The moon was a ghostly galleon. (In the above, was is a copula which links the subject complement ghostly galleon to the subject moon.) |
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Oxford English Dictionary - The term's first citation is from 1939: "A certain number of adverbs may be used as *subject-complements, i.e. as complements to … verbs of incomplete predication." (H. E. Palmer Gram. Spoken Eng. (ed. 2) ii. 80) |
